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 .,^'^et Street, and other poems. 
 
 3 1924 013 469 311 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tlie Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013469311 
 
FLEET STREET 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
BOOKS 
 
 BY / 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 The Testament of a Vivisector. Cd, net. 
 
 The Testament of a Man Forbid, erf. net. 
 
 The Testament of an Empu'e Builder. Is. net. 
 
 The Testament of a Prime Minister. 3s. 6d. net. 
 
 Testament of John Davidson, 3s, 6rf. net. 
 
 The Triumph of Mammon. 5s. net. 
 
 Mammon and liis Message. 5s. net. 
 
 Holiday, and other Poems. 3s, 6d. net. 
 
 Fleet Street, and other Poems. 3s, 6d, net, 
 
 A Rosary. 5s, net. 
 
 Selected Poems. 3s, 6d, net. 
 
 Fleet Street Eclogrues (Two Series). 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 Ballads and Sonj^s. 5s. net. 
 
 New Ballads. 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 The Last Ballad, and other Poems. 4s, 6d. net, 
 
 Godfrida. 5s, net. 
 
 The Theatrocrat : a Tragic Play of Church 
 
 and Stage. 5s. net. 
 The Knight of the Maypole. 5s. net. 
 Self s the Man. 5s, net. 
 An Unhistorical Pastoral. 
 A Romantic Farce. 
 Bruce : a Chronicle Play. 
 Smith : a Tragic Farce. 
 Scaramouch in Naxos : a. Pantomime 
 
 (in one Volume). 7s. dd. net. 
 
 Out of Print 
 
 In a Music Hall, and other Poems. 
 
 Perfervid. 
 
 Miss Armstrong's Circumstances. 
 
 The Great Men. 
 
 Baptist Lake. 
 
 The Wonderful Mission of Earl Lavender. 
 
FLEET STREET 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON 
 
 « 
 
 LONDON 
 
 GRANT RICHARDS 
 
 1909 
 
A.5?35^? 
 
 Copyright, iQog, in the United States o/ America 
 hy Mitchell Kenxerley 
 
"T^HE time has come to make an end. There are 
 several motives. I find my pension is not 
 enouglf,; I have therefore still to turn aside and 
 attempt things for^which people mil pay. My 
 health also counts. Asthma and other annoyances 
 I have tolerated for years; but I cannot put up 
 witnf' cancer. 
 
 I thought this might be my last book, and intended 
 five poems, *^Cain", ^^ Judas", ^^ Ccesar Borgia" , 
 ^^ Calvin" and ^^ Cromwell" under the general 
 title, " When God Meant God", to be the principal 
 contents. " Cain " is the only one of these poems 
 which I have written. I should have concluded 
 the volume with a second Testament in my own 
 person, insisting that men should no longer degrade 
 themselves under such appellations as Christian, 
 Mohammedan, Agnostic, Monist, etc. Men are 
 the Universe become conscious} the simplest m,an 
 should consider himself too great to be called after 
 any name. , 
 
 /. D. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FLEET STREET 9 
 
 SONG I 
 
 THE CRYSTAL PALACE ... ... .24 
 
 RAILWAY STATIONS :— 
 
 LONDON BRIDGE 38 
 
 LIVERPOOL STREET 43 
 
 IN THE CITY 59 
 
 CAIN 61 
 
 ECLOGUES :- 
 
 THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY ... .79 
 
 ST. VALENTINES DAY . 89 
 
 SNOW 95 
 
 THE TESTAMENT OF SIR SIMON SIMPLEX CONCERN- 
 ING AUTOMOBILISM loo 
 
 THE CAKE OF MITHRIDATES iii 
 
 THE LUTANIST 116 
 
 ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT .... . . . . lao 
 
 TWO DOGS .... 121 
 
 THE WASP 127 
 
 THE THAMES EMBANKMENT iig 
 
 THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE ROAD 134 
 
 RAIL AND ROAD 140 
 
 SONG FOR THE TWENTY-FOURTH OF MAY ... 147 
 
FLEET STREET 
 
 WISPS and rags of cloud in a withered sky, 
 A strip of pallid azure, at either end, 
 Above the Ludgate obelisk, above 
 The Temple griffin, widening with the width 
 Below, and parallel with the street that counts 
 Seven hundred paces of tesselated road 
 From Ludgate Circus west to Chancery Lane : 
 By concrete pavement flanked and precipice 
 Of windowed fronts on this side and on that, 
 A thoroughfare of everything that hastes. 
 The sullen tavern-loafers notwithstanding 
 And hawkers in the channel hunger-bit. 
 
 Interfluent night and day the tides of trade. 
 Labour and pleasure, law and crime, are sucked 
 From every urban quarter : through this strait 
 All business London pours. Amidst the boom 
 
FLEET STREET 
 And thud of wheel and hoof the myriad feet 
 Are silent save to him who stands a while 
 And hearkens till his passive ear, attuned 
 To new discernment like an erudite 
 Musician's, which can follow note by note 
 The part of any player even in the din 
 And thrashing fury of the noisiest close 
 Orchestral, hears chromatic footsteps throb. 
 And tense susurrant speech of multitudes 
 That stride in pairs discussing ways and means, 
 Or reason with themselves, in single file 
 Advancing hardily on ruinous 
 Events ; and should he listen long there comes 
 A second-hearing like the second-sight 
 Diviners knew, or as the runner gains 
 His second-breath ; then phantom footsteps fall. 
 And muffled voices travel out of time : 
 Alsatians pass and Templars ; stareabouts 
 For the new motion of Nineveh ; morose 
 Or jolly tipplers of the Bolt-in-Tun, 
 The Devil Tavern ; Johnson's heavy tread 
 And rolling laughter ; Drayton trampling out 
 The thunder of Agincourt as up and down 
 He paces by St. Dunstan's ; Chaucer, wroth. 
 
FLEET STREET 
 Beating the friar that traduced the state ; 
 And more remote, from centuries unknown, 
 Rumour of battle, noises of the swamp. 
 The gride of glacial rock, the rush of wings, 
 The roar of beasts that breathed a fiery air 
 Where fog envelops now electric light. 
 The music of the spheres, the humming speed 
 Centrifugal of molten planets loosed 
 From pregnant suns to find their orbits out. 
 The whirling spindles of the nebulae. 
 The rapture of ethereal darkness strung 
 Illimitable in eternal space. 
 
 Fleet Street was once a silence in the ether. 
 The carbon, iron, copper, silicon. 
 Zinc, aluminium vapours, metalloids. 
 Constituents of the skeleton and shell 
 Of Fleet Street — of the woodwork, metalwork. 
 Brickwork, electric apparatus, drains 
 And printing-presses, conduits, pavement, road- 
 Were at the first unelemented space. 
 Imponderable tension in the dark 
 Consummate matter of eternity. 
 And so the flesh and blood of Fleet Street, nerve 
 
FLEET STREET 
 And brain infusing life and soul, the men, 
 The women, woven, built and kneaded up 
 Of hydrogen, of azote, oxygen. 
 Of carbon, phosphorus, chlorine, sulphur, iron, 
 Of calcium, kalium, natrum, manganese. 
 The warm humanities that day and night 
 Inhabit and employ it and inspire. 
 Were in the ether mingled with it, there- 
 Distinguished nothing from the road, the shops, 
 The drainpipes, sewage, sweepings of the street 
 Matter of infinite beauty and delight 
 Atoning offal, filth and all offence 
 With soul and intellect, with love and thought ; 
 Matter whereof the furthest stars consist. 
 And every interstellar wilderness 
 From galaxy to galaxy, the thin 
 Imponderable ether, matter's ghost, 
 But matter still, substance demonstrable 
 Being the icy vehicle of light. 
 
 Flung off in teardrops spirally, or cast 
 In annular fission forth like Saturn's hoops. 
 Earth and the planets girdled solar space, 
 The offspring and the suburbs of the sun. 
 
FLEET STREET 
 In rings or drops — the learned are unresolved 
 How planets and their satellites arrive ; 
 But vision, vouching both, is more obsessed 
 By Saturn's way of circles here at hand. 
 Saturn has uttered many moons ; his rings 
 May be the last abortive birth of powers 
 Luniparous unmatched in heaven ; or else 
 These still-born undeveloped satellites 
 Denote an overweening confidence 
 Determined, risking all, on something new. 
 Having outstreated spirally and well 
 A brilliant series of customary moons. 
 The hazardous and genial orb began 
 A segregation annular instead. 
 Attempting boldly the impossible, 
 Thus to become the wonder of the skies 
 For ever hampered with the rings we see. 
 Stupendous error still eclipses net 
 Achievement ; as in art the Sistine roof 
 Sublimely figured, or hardihood in war 
 That wastes a troop for glory, or as earth 
 In sheer terrestrial wantonness flung up 
 The Maripesan Vale, so in the skies 
 The most enchanting vision of the night, 
 
 «3 
 
FLEET STREET 
 Our belted Saturn shines, extravagance 
 Celestial jewelled with its dazzling fault. 
 
 Now, in the ether with all the universe, 
 
 And in the nebula of our solar scheme, 
 
 Fleet Street and Saturn's rings were interfused, 
 
 One mass of molecules being set apart 
 
 For the high theme of wonder and the butt 
 
 Of speculation, and the other doomed. 
 
 Although the most renowned throughout the 
 
 world. 
 To be a little noisy London street. 
 How think we then ? The metal, stone and lime, 
 Brick, asphalt, wood, the matter that renews 
 The shell of Fleet Street, does it still begrudge 
 The luminous zones with which it once was blent 
 Their lofty glory ? Or must the carapace 
 Of Fleet Street, welded of the selfsame stuff 
 As man, be utterly oblivious? Thought 
 And passion, envy, joy — are these unfelt 
 By carbon, iron, azote, oxygen. 
 And other liberal substances that know 
 Rejoice and suffer in mankind, when power 
 Selective turns them into street ? Things wrought 
 
 14 
 
FLEET STREET 
 By us, are they, too, psychophysical ? 
 Do these piled storeys and purlieus quaint of 
 
 square 
 And alley envy Saturn's belts — a brief. 
 Not outwar(^ly distinguished urban street 
 Upon a planet only remarkable 
 Among the spheres for insignificance, 
 And they so lovely and unparagoned 
 A thousand million of mundane miles away ? 
 Are able editors, leader-writers, apt 
 Telegraphists and printers, the only soul 
 In Fleet Street, they, its only consciousness ? 
 Perhaps the bricks remember. Who can tell 
 When filthy fog comes down and lights are out. 
 Machinery still, and traffic at the ebb. 
 If idle streets with time to meditate 
 Resent enforced passivity? I think 
 The admirable patience of the bricks 
 May fail them of a Sunday. Imagine it : 
 To be for ages unalterable brick. 
 Sans speech or motion, nameless in a wall 
 Among a million bricks alike unknown ! 
 I think the splendid patience of the bricks 
 Gives out in darkness and foul weather, even 
 
 IS 
 
FLEET STREET 
 To the length of envying the wonderful 
 Exalted destiny of Saturn's belts ; 
 And then I long to tell them, if I could, 
 How much more happy their condition is 
 Than that of rubbish revolving endlessly 
 In agonies of impotent remorse 
 About the planet it deserted. Thus 
 Should I exhort them : — "Bricks, beloved bricks, 
 My brethren of the selfsame ether bred, 
 I hold it very beautiful of you 
 To think so handsomely of Saturn's rings, 
 Your old companions in the nebula ; 
 But I can tell you and I'll make you know. 
 Your fate is not inferior to theirs. 
 These seeming jewelled zones that shine so bright 
 Are the mere wreck of matter, broken bits. 
 Detached and grinding beaches of barren rock 
 Hung up there as a menace and a sign ; 
 Circular strips of chaos unredeemed. 
 Whirling in madness of oppugnant powers. 
 Whether his rings are Saturn's own attempt. 
 Abnormal and abortive, a brilliant ninth 
 Consummate moon to utter, or likelier still, 
 A leash of runaway material tides 
 
 i6 
 
FLEET STREET 
 That mutinously left their native orb 
 In molten youth to show all other stars 
 The real and only way to shine, and failed 
 Inevitably, being immature, 
 They are, beyond all doubt, unhappy zones. 
 Forlorn, remorseful, useless and ashamed. 
 Most beautiful, I grant you ; beautiful 
 And useless, like all art : their fate it is 
 To be an agony of beauty, art 
 Inutile, unavailing, misconceived. 
 But you, most genial, intellectual bricks. 
 Most dutiful and most important, you 
 Are indispensable, an integral 
 Component of the world's most famous street. 
 Within your wholesome and convenient field 
 The truest miracle is daily done. 
 Never forget that men have tamed and taught 
 The lightning ; clad it in a livery known 
 As news ; and that without your constant aid 
 Our modern, actual magic, black and, white. 
 Momentous mystery of telegraphy. 
 Resounding press, accomplished intellects 
 ..And pens expert would be impossible. 
 Take down the walls your myrmidons compose, 
 
 B 17 
 
FLEET STREET 
 And Fleet Street, soul and body, ceases — fog 
 Unoccupied, wind, city sunshine sparse 
 And pallid claiming all the room that now, 
 Enclosed, accoutred, functioned, named and known 
 Serves as the Dionysius' ear of the world. 
 Honour and excellence and praise are yours ; 
 Be satisfied ; be glad ". 
 
 But all the bricks, 
 O'erburdened and begrimed, in chorus sighed. 
 And as one brick, " Upon my cubical 
 Content, and by our common mother, I 
 Had rather shine, a shard of chaos, set 
 In Saturn's glistering rings, the exquisite 
 Enigma of the night, than be the unnamed, 
 Unthought-of copestone or foundation-stone 
 Of any merely world-distinguished street ". 
 
 Applauding the ambition of the bricks, 
 I felt, I also, I would rather share 
 Dazzling perdition with material wreck 
 Suspended in majestic agony 
 About the withered loins of some undone 
 Wide-circling planet for the universe 
 
 i8 
 
FLEET STREET- 
 To see, than live the dull life of a baked 
 Oblength of tempered clay, year in year out 
 Unnoticed in a murky mundane street ; 
 But recollecting that the bricks were bricks 
 And not a planetary wonder, what 
 Event soe'er awaits the world and time, 
 I reassured them : " Gallant souls ", I cried, 
 " Noble and faithful bricks, be not dismayed I 
 I hear the shapeless fragments that make up 
 Esthetic marvel in Saturn's girdles sigh 
 Disconsolately, as they chafe and grind 
 Each other, — Such an enviable fate 
 As that of any single solid brick 
 In Fleet Street, London, well and truly laid, 
 A moulded, tempered, necessary brick 
 In that most famous faubourg of the •world, 
 Exceeds our merits ! Could we but attain 
 The crude integrity of commonplace 
 Cohesion even in the most exhausted, most 
 Decrepit, ruinous, forgotten orb 
 In some back alley of the Milky Way 
 Hffw happy we should be ! Remember, bricks, 
 Neither success nor failure envy spares ; 
 Use envies art ; art envies use. These moods 
 
 19 
 
FLEET STREET 
 Will come ; but regular bricks like you transcend 
 Them always. Be courageous ; be yourselves, 
 Be proud of your telluric destiny ". 
 
 With that the bricks took heart. " Why, so we 
 
 are", 
 They said, " the ear of England ! Let us be 
 Old England's ear ! " And revolution beat 
 In smothered cries and muffled fusillades 
 Upon the trembling tympanal ; empires 
 At war thridded the sounding labyrinth 
 With cannon ; loyal peoples through the sea 
 And through the air by auditory nerves 
 Electric from the quarters of the earth 
 And from a hundred isles, their homage sent 
 With whispered news of aspirations, deeds, 
 Achievements to the Mother of Nations, she 
 Whose ever vigilant, clairaudient ear 
 Is Fleet Street. 
 
SONG 
 
 CLOSES and courts and lanes, 
 Devious, clustered thick, 
 The thoroughfare, mains and drains. 
 
 People and mortar and brick. 
 Wood, metal, machinery, brains. 
 Pen and composing-stick : 
 
 Fleet Street, but exquisite flame 
 
 In the nebula once ere day and night 
 
 Began their travail, or earth became, 
 And all was passionate light. 
 
 Networks of wire overland. 
 
 Conduits under the sea. 
 Aerial message from strand to strand 
 
 By lightning that travels free. 
 
SONG 
 
 Hither in haste to hand 
 Tidings of destiny : 
 
 These tingling nerves of the world's 
 affairs 
 
 Deliver remorseless, rendering still 
 The fall of empires, the price of shares. 
 
 The record of good and ill. 
 
 Tidal the traffic goes 
 
 Citywards out of the town ; 
 Townwards the evening ebb o'erflows 
 
 This highway of old renown, 
 When the fog-woven curtains close, 
 
 And the urban night comes down, 
 
 Where souls are spilt and intellects spent 
 O'er news vociferant near and far, 
 
 From Hesperus hard to the Orient, 
 From dawn to the evening star. 
 
 This is the royal refrain 
 
 That burdens the boom and the thud 
 Of omnibus, mobus, wain, 
 
 And the hoofs on the beaten mud. 
 
SONG 
 
 From the Griffin at Chancery Lane 
 To the portal of old King Lud — 
 
 Fleet Street, diligent night and day, 
 Of news the mart and the burnished 
 hearth, 
 
 Seven hundred paces of narrow way, 
 A notable bit of the earth. 
 
 23 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 
 CONTRAPTION,— that's the bizarre, proper 
 slang, 
 Eclectic word, for this portentous toy. 
 The flying-machine, that gyrates stiffly, arms 
 A-kimbo, so to say, and baskets slung 
 From every elbow, skating in the air. 
 Irreverent, we ; but Tartars from Thibet 
 May deem Sir Hiram the Grandest Lama, deem 
 His volatile machinery best, and most 
 Magnific, rotatory engine, meant 
 For penitence and prayer combined, whereby 
 Petitioner as well as orison 
 Are spun about in space : a solemn rite 
 Before the portal of that fane unique, 
 Victorian temple of commercialism. 
 Our very own eighth wonder of the world, 
 The Crystal Palace. 
 
 24 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 
 So sublime! Like some 
 Immense crustacean's gannoid skeleton, 
 Unearthed, and cleansed, and polished ! Were it so 
 Our paleontological respect 
 Would shield it from derision ; but when a shed. 
 Intended for a palace, looks as like 
 The fossil of a giant myriapod I . . . 
 'Twas Isabey — sarcastic wretch ! — who told 
 A young aspirant, studying tandem art 
 And medicine, that he certainly was born 
 To be a surgeon : " When you try ", he said, 
 " To paint a boat you paint a tumour ". 
 
 No 
 Idea of its purpose, and no word 
 Can make your glass and iron beautiful. 
 Colossal ugliness may fascinate 
 If something be expressed ; and time adopts 
 Ungainliest stone and brick and ruins them 
 To beauty ; but a building lacking life, 
 A house that must not mellow or decay ? — 
 'Tis nature's outcast. Moss and lichen ? Stains 
 Of weather? From the first Nature said " No ! 
 Shine there unblessed, a witness of my scorn ! 
 
 2S 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 I love the ashlar and the well-baked clay ; 
 My seasons can adorn them sumptuously : 
 But you shall stand rebuked till men ashamed, 
 Abhor you, and destroy you and repent ! " 
 
 But come : here's crowd ; here's mob ; a gala day ! 
 The walks are black with people : no one hastes ; 
 They all pursue their purpose business-like — 
 The polo-ground, the cycle-track ; but most 
 Invade the palace glumly once again. 
 It is "again " ; you feel it in the air — 
 Resigned habitues on every hand : 
 And yet agog ; abandoned, yet concerned ! 
 They can't tell why they come ; they only know 
 They must shove through the holiday somehow. 
 
 In the main floor the fretful multitude 
 
 Circulates from the north nave to the south 
 
 Across the central transept — swish and tread 
 
 And murmur, like a seaboard's mingled sound. 
 
 About the sideshows eddies swirl and swing : 
 
 Distorting mirrors ; waltzing-tops— wherein 
 
 Couples are wildly spun contrariwise 
 
 To your revolving platform ; biographs. 
 
 Or rifle-ranges ; panoramas : choose ! 
 
 26 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 As Stupid as it was last holiday ? 
 They think so, — every whit ! Outside, perhaps ? 
 A spice of danger in the flying-machine? 
 A few who passed that whirligig, their hopes 
 On higher things, return disconsolate 
 To try the Tartar's volant oratory. 
 Others again, no more anticipant 
 Of any active business in their own 
 Diversion, joining stalwart folk who sought 
 At once the polo-ground, the cycle-track. 
 Accept the includible ; while some 
 (Insidious anti-climax here) frequent 
 The water-entertainments— shallops, chutes 
 And rivers subterrene : — thus, passive, all, 
 Like savages bewitched, submit at last 
 To be the dupes of pleasure, sadly gay — 
 Victims, and not companions, of delight ! 
 
 Not all ! The garden-terrace : — hark, behold, 
 Music and dancing ! People by themselves 
 Attempting happiness ! A box of reeds — 
 Accordion, concertina, seraphine — 
 And practised fingers charm advertent feet ! 
 The girls can dance, but, O their heavy-shod 
 
 27 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 Unwieldy swains ! — No matter : — hatless heads, 
 With hair undone, eyes shut and cheeks aglow 
 On blissful shoulders lie : — such solemn youths 
 Sustaining ravished donahs ! Round they swing, 
 In time or out, but unashamed and all 
 Enchanted with the glory of the world. 
 And look ! — Among the laurels on the lawns 
 Torn coats and ragged skirts, starved faces flushed 
 With passion and with wonder ! — hid away 
 Avowedly ; but seen — and yet not seen ! 
 None laugh ; none point ; none notice : multitude 
 Remembers and forgives ; unwisest love 
 Is sacrosanct upon a holiday. 
 Out of the slums, into the open air 
 Let loose for once, their scant economies 
 Already spent, what was there left to do ? 
 O sweetly, tenderly, devoutly think. 
 Shepherd and Shepherdess in Arcady ! 
 
 A heavy shower ; the Palace fills ; begins 
 The business and the office of the day. 
 The eating and the drinking — only real 
 Enjoyment to be had, they tell you straight 
 Now that the shifty weather fails them too. 
 
 28 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 But what's the pother here, the blank dismay ? 
 Money has lost its value at the bars : 
 Like tavern-tokens when the Boar's Head rang 
 With laughter and the Mermaid swam in wine, 
 Tickets are now the only currency. 
 Before the buffets, metal tables packed 
 As closely as mosaic, with peopled chairs 
 Cementing them, where damsels in and out 
 Attend with food, like disembodied things 
 That traverse rock as easily as air — 
 These are the havens, these the happy isles ! 
 A dozen people fight for every seat — 
 Without a quarrel, unturbently : O, 
 A peaceable, a tame, a timorous crowd ! 
 And yet relentless : this they know they need ; 
 Here have they money's worth — some food, some 
 
 drink ; 
 And so alone, in couples, families, groups. 
 Consuming and consumed — for as they munch 
 Their victuals all their vitals ennui gnaws — 
 They sit and sit, and fain would sit it out 
 In tedious gormandize till firework-time. 
 But business beats them : those who sit must eat. 
 Tickets are purchased at besieged kiosks, 
 
 29 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 And when their value's spent — ^with such a 
 
 grudge !— 
 They rise to buy again, and lose their seats ; 
 For this is Mob, unhappy locust-swarm. 
 Instinctive, apathetic, ravenous. 
 
 Beyond a doubt a most unhappy crowd ! 
 
 Some scores of thousands searching up and down 
 
 The north nave and the south nave hungrily 
 
 For space to sit and rest to eat and drink : 
 
 Or captives in a labyrinth, or herds 
 
 Imprisoned in a vast arena ; here 
 
 A moment clustered ; there entangled ; now 
 
 In reaches sped and now in whirlpools spun 
 
 With noises like the wind and like the sea, 
 
 But silent vocally : they hate to speak : 
 
 Crowd ; Mob ; a blur of faces featureless. 
 
 Of forms inane ; a stranded shoal of folk. 
 
 Astounding in the midst of this to meet 
 Voltaire, the man who worshipped first, who made 
 Indeed, the only god men reverence now. 
 Public Opinion. There he sits alert — 
 A cast of Houdon's smiling philosophe. 
 
 30 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 Old lion-fox, old tiger-ape — what names 
 They gave him ! — better charactered by one 
 Who was his heir : "The amiable and gay ". 
 So said the pessimist who called life sour 
 And drank it to the dregs. Enough : Voltaire — 
 About to speak : hands of a mummy clutch 
 The fauteuil's arms ; he listens to the last 
 Before reply ; one foot advanced ; a new 
 Idea radiant in his wrinkled face. 
 
 Lunch in the grill-room for the well-to-do, 
 The spendthrifts and the connoisseurs of food — 
 Gourmet, gourmand, bezonian, epicure. 
 Reserved seats at the window? — Surely ; you 
 And I must have the best place everywhere. 
 A deluge smudges out the landscape. Watch 
 The waiters since the scenery's not on view. 
 A harvest-day with them, our Switzers — knights 
 Of the napkin ! How they balance loaded trays 
 And though they push each other spill no drop ! 
 And how they glare at lazy lunchers, snatch 
 Unfinished plates sans " by your leave ", and fling 
 The next dish down, before the dazzled lout 
 (The Switzer knows his man) has time to con 
 
 31 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 The menu, every tip precisely gaged, 
 Precisely earned, no service thrown away. 
 Sign of an extra douceur, reprimand 
 Is welcomed, and the valetudinous 
 Voluptuary served devoutly : he 
 With cauteries on his cranium ; dyed moustache ; 
 Teeth like a sea-wolf's, each a work of art 
 Numbered and valued singly ; copper skin ; 
 And nether eyelids pouched : — why he alone 
 Is worth a half-day's wage ! Waiters for him 
 Are pensioners of indigestion, paid 
 As ^cret criminals disburse blackmail. 
 As Attic gluttons sacrificed a cock 
 To yEsculapius to propitiate 
 Hygeia — if the classic flourish serves ! 
 
 "Grilled soles?"— for us : — Kidneys to follow.— 
 
 Now, 
 Your sole, sir ; eat it with profound respect. 
 A little salt with one side ; — scarce a pinch ! 
 The other side with lemon ; — tenderly I 
 Don't crush the starred bisection ;— count the 
 
 drops ! 
 Those who begin with lemon miss the true 
 
 32 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 Aroma : quicken sense with salt, and then 
 The subtle, poignant, citric savour tunes 
 The delicate texture of the foam-white fish, 
 Evolving palatable harmony 
 That music might by happy chance express. 
 A crust of bread — (eat slowly : thirty chews, 
 Gladstonian rumination) — to change the key. 
 And now the wine — a well-decanted, choice 
 Chateau, bon per; a decade old ; not more ; 
 A velvet claret, piously unchilled. 
 A boiled potato with the kidney . . . No ! 
 Barbarian ! Vandal ! Sauce? 'Twould ruin all I 
 The kidney's the potato's sauce. Perpend : 
 You taste the esoteric attribute 
 In food ; and know that all necessity 
 Is beauty's essence. Fill your glass : salute 
 The memory of the happy neolith 
 Who had the luck to hit on roast and boiled. 
 Finish the claret. — Now the rain has gone 
 The clouds are winnowed by the sighing south. 
 And hidden sunbeams through a silver woof 
 A warp of pallid bronze in secret ply. 
 
 Cigars and coffee in the billiard-room. 
 
 c 33 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 No soul here save the marker, eating chops ; 
 The waiter and the damsel at the bar, 
 In listless talk. A most uncanny thing. 
 To enter suddenly a desolate cave 
 Upon the margent of the sounding Mob ! 
 A hundred thousand people, class and mass. 
 In and about the palace, and not a pair 
 To play a hundred up ! The billiard-room's 
 The smoking-room ; and spacious too, like all 
 The apartments of the Palace : — why 
 Unused on holidays ? The marker : aged ; 
 Short, broad, but of a presence ; reticent 
 And self-respecting ; not at all the type : — 
 " O well ", says he ; "the business of the room 
 Fluctuates very little, year in, year out. 
 My customers are seasons mostly ". One 
 On the instant enters : a curate, very much 
 At ease in Zion — and in Sydenham. 
 He tells two funny stories — not of the room ; 
 And talks about the stage. "In London now". 
 He thinks, "the play's the thing. He undertakes 
 To entertain and not to preach : you see, 
 It's with the theatre and the music-hall. 
 Actor and artiste, the parson must compete. 
 
 34 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 Every bank-holiday and special day 
 The Crystal Palace sees him. Yes ; he feels 
 His hand's upon the public pulse on such 
 Occasions ". O, a sanguine clergyman ! 
 
 Heard in the billiard-room the sound of Mob, 
 Occult and ominous, besets the mind ; 
 Something gigantic, something terrible 
 Passes without ; repasses ; lingers ; goes ; 
 Returns and on the threshold pants in doubt 
 Whether to knock and enter, or burst the door 
 In hope of treasure and a living prey. 
 The vainest fantasy ! Rejoin the crowd : 
 At once the sound depreciates. Up and down 
 The north nave and the south nave hastily 
 Some tens of thousands walk, silent and sad, 
 A most unhappy people. — Hereabout 
 Cellini's Perseus ought to be. Not that ; 
 That's stucco — and Canova's : a stupid thing ; 
 The face and posture of a governess — 
 A nursery governess who's had the nerve 
 To pick a dead mouse up. It used to stand 
 Beside the billiard-room, against the wall, 
 A cast of Benvenuto's masterpiece — 
 
 35 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 That came out lame, as he foretold, despite 
 His dinner dishes in the foundry flung. 
 They shift their sculpture here haphazard. — That? 
 King Francis — by Clesinger — on a horse. 
 Absurd : most mounted statues are. — And this? 
 Verrochio's Coleone. Not absurd : 
 Grotesque and strong, the battle-harlot rides 
 A stallion ; fore and aft, his saddle, peaked 
 Like a mitre, grips him as in a vice. 
 In heavy armour mailed ; his lifted helm 
 Reveals his dreadful look ; his brows are drawn ; 
 Four wrinkles deeply trench his muscular face ; 
 His left arm half-extended, and the reins 
 Held carelessly, although the gesture's tense ; 
 His right hand wields a sword invisible ; 
 Remorseless pressure of his lips protrudes 
 His mouth ; he would decapitate the world. 
 
 The light is artificial now ; the place 
 Phantasmal like a beach in hell where souls 
 Are ground together by an unseen sea. 
 A dense throng in the central transept, wedged 
 So tightly they can neither clap nor stamp. 
 Shouting applause at something, goad themselves 
 In sheer despair to think it rather fine : 
 
 36 
 
THE CRYSTAL PALACE 
 " We came here to enjoy ourselves. Bravo, 
 Then! Are we not?" Courageous folk beneath 
 The brows of Michael Angelo's Moses dance 
 A Cakewalk in the dim Renascence Court. 
 Three people in the silent Reading-room 
 Regard us darkly as we enter : three 
 Come in with us, stare vacantly about. 
 Look from the window and withdraw at once. 
 A drama ; a balloon ; a Beauty Show : — 
 People have seen them doubtless ; but none of 
 
 those 
 Deluded myriads walking up and down 
 The north nave and the south nave anxiously — 
 And aimlessly, so silent and so sad. 
 
 The day wears ; twilight ends ; the night comes 
 
 down. 
 A ruddy targelike moon in a purple sky, 
 And the crowd waiting on the fireworks. Come : 
 Enough of Mob for one while. This way out — 
 Past Linacre and Chatham, the second Charles, 
 Venus and Victory — and Sir William Jones 
 In placid contemplation of a State ! — 
 Down the long corridor to the district train. 
 
 37 
 
RAILWAY STATIONS 
 
 I 
 LONDON BRIDGE 
 
 MUCH tolerance and genial strength of mind 
 Unbiassed witnesses who wish to find 
 This railway-station possible at all 
 Must cheerfully expend. Artistical 
 Ideas wither here : a magic power 
 Alone can pardon and in pity dower 
 With Active charm a structure so immane. 
 How then may fancy, to begin with, feign 
 An origin for such a roundabout 
 Approach — so intricate, yet so without 
 Intention, and so spanned by tenebrous 
 And thundering viaducts ? Grotesquely, thus : — 
 One night the disposition of the ward 
 Was shifted ; for the streets with one accord, 
 
 j8 
 
LONDON BRIDGE 
 Enfranchised by a landslip, danced the hay 
 And innocently jumbled up the way. 
 And so we enter. Here, without perhaps, 
 Except the automatic money-traps. 
 Inside the station, everything's so old, 
 So inconvenient, of such manifold 
 Perplexity, and, as a mole might see. 
 So strictly what a station shouldn't be, 
 That no idea minifies its crude 
 And yet elaborate ineptitude. 
 But some such fancied cataclysmal birth :-^ 
 Out of the nombles of the martyred earth 
 This old, unhappy terminus was hurled 
 Back from a day of small things when the world 
 At twenty miles an hour still stood aghast, 
 And thought the penny post mutation vast 
 As change itself. Before the Atlantic race 
 Developed turbined speed ; before life's pace 
 Was set by automobilism ; before 
 The furthest stars came thundering at the door 
 To claim close kindred with the sons of men ; 
 Before the lettered keys outsped the pen ; 
 Ere poverty was deemed the only crime 
 Or wireless news annihilated time, 
 
 39 
 
LONDON BRIDGE 
 Divulged now by an earthquake in the night, 
 This ancient terminus first saw the light. 
 
 A natural magic having gravely made 
 
 This desperate station possible, delayed 
 
 No longer by its character uncouth. 
 
 The innocent adventurer, seeking truth 
 
 Imaginative, if it may be, plays 
 
 His vision, penetrant as chemic rays, 
 
 Upon the delta wide of platforms, whence 
 
 Discharges into London's sea, immense 
 
 And turbulent, a brimming human Hood, 
 
 A river inexhaustible of blood 
 
 That turns the wheels, and by a secret, old 
 
 As labour, changes heart-beats into gold 
 
 For those that toil not ; all the gutters run. 
 
 Houses are daubed, with it ; and moon and sun 
 
 Splashed as they spin. And yet this human 
 
 tide. 
 As callous as the glaciers that glide 
 A foot a day, but as a torrent swift. 
 Sweeps unobservant save of time — for thrift 
 Or dread disposes clockwards every glance — 
 
 Right through a station which a seismic dance 
 
 40 
 
LONDON BRIDGE 
 Chimerical alone can harmonize 
 Even in imagination's friendly eyes. 
 
 Clearly a brimming tide of mind as well 
 As blood, whose ebb and flow is buy and sell, 
 Engulfed by London's storm and stress of trade 
 Before it reached the civic sea, and made 
 Oblivious, knowing nought terrestrial 
 Except that time is money, and money all. 
 
 Or when a portly dealer, well-to-do, 
 Chances to see it as he passes through, 
 Or boy or girl not yet entirely swamped 
 In ways and means and business of accompt. 
 About the many-platformed embouchure 
 And utterance of suburban life obscure 
 A liberal oeillade tosses, with a note 
 Chromatic, crimson van and crimson coat. 
 The parcel-post, and many a crimson shrine 
 Of merchandise mechanical combine 
 To reassure them as a point of war 
 Inspires the soldier ; for the cannon's roar. 
 The trumpet's blast, the thunder of the drum 
 Are crimson motives ; and the city's hum, 
 The noise of battle, and a ruddy sky 
 May echo in the selfsame harmony. 
 
 41 
 
LONDON BRIDGE 
 Save when the glance of age whose brisk aSuits 
 Look up on 'Change, of youth untouched by care's 
 Inhibitory wand that palsies thought, 
 No other gracious sign appears, nor aught 
 Distinctly personal, innate or earned, 
 In the dull, rapid passage of concerned 
 Expression from the station to the street. 
 Until a dire resemblance of defeat 
 In one set visage hides the common face : 
 Such a premonstrant shadow of disgrace, 
 Such gray alarm, such sickening for despair 
 Is only seen in urban crowds, for there 
 The broken broker feels himself alone. 
 Exempt from scrutiny even of his own 
 Protean introspection, and as free 
 As genius, or as fallen spirit, to be 
 The very image of the thing he is — 
 A figure on the brink of the abyss, 
 The failure and the scapegoat of the mart, 
 The loser in the game, the tragic part 
 Wherein some novice mastered by the play 
 Without rehearsal triumphs every day. 
 
 42 
 
II 
 
 LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 
 THROUGH crystal roofs the sunlight fell, 
 And pencilled beams the gloss renewed 
 On iron rafters balanced well 
 On iron struts ; though dimly hued, 
 With smoke o'erlaid, with dust endued, 
 The walls and beams like beryl shone ; 
 And dappled light the platforms strewed 
 With yellow foliage of the dawn 
 That withered by the porch of day's divan. 
 
 The fragrant, suave autumnal air 
 A dulcet Indian summer breathed. 
 Able to reach the inmost lair 
 Unclean of London's interwreathed 
 And labyrinthine railways, sheathed 
 In annual increments of soot : 
 Memories of regions parked and heathed, 
 Of orchards lit with golden fruit 
 Attuned October's subterranean lute. 
 
 43 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 But orchards lit with golden lamps, 
 Or purple moor, or nutbrown stream, 
 Or mountains where the morn encamps 
 Frequent no station-loafer's dream : 
 A breed of folk forlorn that seem 
 The heirs of disappointment, cast 
 By fate to be the preacher's theme. 
 To hunger daily and to fast. 
 And sink to helpless indigence at last. 
 
 From early morn they hang about 
 The bookstall, the refreshment-room ; 
 They pause and think, as if in doubt 
 Which train to go by ; now assume 
 A jaunty air, and now in gloom 
 They take the platform for a stage 
 And pace it, meditating doom — 
 Their own, the world's ; in baffled rage 
 Condemning still the imperceptive age. 
 
 Like aromatic wine that does 
 As wine will do with living clay, 
 The wonderful, anachronous, 
 Autumnal-summertidal day 
 
 44 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 Seduced a laboured soul to play 
 The idler : — (one who could rehearse 
 Unheard-of things ; whose thoughts were gray 
 With travail, and whose reason scarce 
 Escaped the onslaught of the universe : 
 
 Yet one who waged an equal strife, 
 And, unsubdued, beyond the sad 
 Horizon of terrestrial life 
 In noisome cloud and thunder clad, 
 And death-cries of the past that bade 
 Repent, above the galaxy 
 Enthroned himself; and, sane or mad, 
 Magnanimously claimed to be 
 The soul and substance of eternity.) 
 
 He, then, to whom all things were great 
 By virtue of his native power. 
 Applauded autumn's sumptuous state. 
 And meant to share her golden hour — 
 Her kiss that moved the faded flower 
 To blush again, the haunting time 
 And witchcraft of her inmost bower. 
 Restoring for an afternoon 
 The bosom and the fragrant skirts of June. 
 
 45 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 He booked to Epping Street. The train 
 Drew out and clanking idly strayed 
 Along the line with dull refrain 
 That mocked the exigence of trade. 
 At Woodford milkmen long delayed 
 The journey ; and at Snaresbrook noise 
 Broke out, and passengers inveighed 
 Against the line : such bitter joys 
 Two-faced occasion brings. At Theydon Bois 
 
 At Chigwell Lane and Loughton, all 
 Complacent forest hamlets, folk. 
 Since chance itself might not forestall 
 Their sylvan leisure, tarrying, spoke 
 On footboards poised ; and this one's joke. 
 And that one's parting comment, wound 
 A strand of laughter through the smoke 
 And pulsing steam, whose rhythmic sound 
 With pliant wheels a thundrous music ground. 
 
 From Epping Street where half a score 
 Inviting hostels lie between 
 The upper forest and the lower. 
 The bounds and metes of that demesne 
 46 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 That once from Waltham surged in green 
 Luxuriance to the northern tide, 
 The lover of the fall's serene 
 Miraculous renascence hied 
 By turnpike, woodland path and forest-ride. 
 
 A purple haze that scarce could keep 
 Diaphanous consistence spread 
 Above the ridged perspective deep 
 Of Epping Forest ; overhead, 
 With arabesque of shining thread 
 As manifold as jewelled dyes. 
 In varied beauty interwed 
 A snowy vapour damaskwise 
 Endued the tenderest of turquoise skies. 
 
 Ripples of cloud like silver strands 
 Escaloped by continual surge. 
 The seaboard of fantastic lands. 
 Defined the welkin's orient verge : 
 He heard afar the airy dirge 
 Of breaking billows, saw the foam 
 In heaven mantle, spindrift scourge 
 The zenith, and their shadows roam 
 Across the woods like coveys flying home. 
 
 47 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 A herd of clouds with fleeces rent 
 Flocked in the west ; an aigret plumed 
 The low-hung northern firmament ; 
 But in the south a shadow loomed 
 Like chaos out of eld exhumed 
 To re-engulf the world long lost 
 In time ; and yet the darkness bloomed 
 With sprays of bronze like briars tossed, 
 With hidden flower and fruit of flame embossed 
 
 He heard the woodman's fateful strokes 
 In Epping Thicket, blow on blow, 
 Where spaciously the loftiest oaks 
 In all the forest precincts grow. 
 The rose, the bramble and the sloe 
 Muffled the holly, hid the thorn ; , 
 And berries blushed with diverse glow 
 Of gradual colour like the morn, 
 Whose changing hues the ravished east adorn. 
 
 In many a dome of russet green. 
 Without a centre shaft to draw 
 The branches round it, might be seen. 
 Once more with tender-hearted awe, 
 48 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 The burning bush religion saw — 
 The nightshade's coral hanging free, 
 The scarlet hip, the crimson haw, 
 The swarthy bramble lovingly 
 Enwreathed as in a myriad-minded tree. 
 
 The bramble leaves, with iron mould 
 Distained, like metal foliage glanced ; 
 The fluted beech, in ruddy gold 
 Accoutred bravely, countenanced 
 The yellow thorn, whose hue enhanced 
 In turn the heather's rusty ore ; 
 The bracken, faded all, advanced 
 Along the forest's pillared floor — 
 A tawny tide upon an emerald shore. 
 
 But eager frosts that braise and brand 
 Autumnal foliage still delayed ; 
 Green was the forest, green the land, 
 A fibrous sward, a toothsome blade : 
 The cow-bells rang in every glade 
 Their quaint memorial refrain, 
 A ghostly sound by change unlaid ; 
 The year stood still ; and summer, fain 
 As in her prime, usurped the world again. 
 D 49 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 The chrysosperm in sunbeams pent 
 A largesse squandered. Rich as light 
 Of rainbow brede, the forest-scent ; 
 And subtler, keener than the white 
 Aroma of the stars at night 
 That maddens lovers wandering late 
 Betrothed in destiny's despite ; 
 As searching as the importunate 
 And supersensuous ether uncreate. 
 
 A doe stepped forth and pried about 
 With wondering look and watchful ear, 
 Then vanished. Venturous birds burst out 
 As in the heyday of the year 
 With summer song in snatches, clear 
 As water dropping in a well ; 
 Harmonious from a turret near 
 Replied a silvery vesper-bell ; 
 The braided light grew golden ; evening fell. 
 
 In Highbeach Holt, a place alone, 
 A wonder of the world, antique 
 Protected beeches straightly grown, 
 Or pollarded of yore and meek 
 5° 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 Transmuters of the shapeless freak 
 The iron wrought throughout the years 
 To symmetry, that all things seek 
 For ever, they, the verderer's 
 Most cherished vert in all his marks and meres 
 
 Upon a forest fabric stood 
 Three-piles of leaves and fruitful mast, 
 That carpeted the upland wood 
 And crypts and bowers, obscure and vast 
 In the close twilight waning fast : 
 Some scumbled moss, with here and there 
 A stroke of scanty herbage, cast 
 A chord of green, remarked and rare 
 Among the russet spreading everywhere. 
 
 All still and stately ancient trees. 
 With stem erect and ample bole. 
 Maintained their native majesties 
 In leafy robe and verdant stole 
 Invested, green from fork to poll ; 
 Old, gnarled and thundersmitten, some 
 Uncouthly grew, the sylvan soul 
 By brutal accident become 
 A tortured wraith in hideous anguish dumb. 
 
 51 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 The saplings flourished straight and tall 
 Like living palisades a-row, 
 Their lance-like stems in vertical 
 And rhythmic parallels below ; 
 Above like crayon lines that flow 
 Obliquely through each other, swart 
 Immingled boughs in writhen throe 
 A cross-hatched canopy athwart 
 The precinct flung and roofed the arboured court. 
 
 A silence like the dead of night 
 The ebon-pillared emerald walls 
 Immured ; a dusky latticed light 
 Fulfilled the high-groined cloisters, halls, 
 Occult recesses, wildwood stalls 
 In glimmering chancel-aisles arrayed ; 
 And violet beams at intervals 
 Illumed the forest-girdled glade 
 Through rents and loopholes in the beechen shade 
 
 With hue and form so diverse stored. 
 Beauty and wonder, vaulted space 
 By fantasy alone explored. 
 The solitude and rich embrace 
 
 52 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 Soul-clasping of that silent place 
 So sphered his vision, steeped his brain 
 In dreams, that he beheld no trace 
 Of mundane things, nor hint nor stain 
 Of twilight or of night, until again 
 
 He reached the city. Then and there 
 A potent urban spell subdued 
 The forest's, for the sorcerer 
 Of sorcerers is multitude. 
 Three railway-stations closely brood 
 Together by the Bishop's Gate, 
 That ancient, famous neighbourhood ; 
 And nowhere more profoundly, late 
 Or early, can the nameless sense of fate 
 
 In numbers immanent be felt 
 Than in these eastern haunts at night. 
 Where eddying tumults surge and melt. 
 Like clouds beneath remorseless light 
 In streets and garnished windows, bright 
 As for some celebration high. 
 While tides of transit at the height 
 In rival modes of passage vie, 
 And wheel and hoof and automobile ply. 
 
 S3 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 Barbaric shouts and shrieks he heard, 
 Like cries of wrath or cries of ruth ; 
 But no one laughed or spoke a word ; 
 Master and man, and age and youth 
 In purposeless, intense, uncouth 
 Commotion seemed for ever lost, 
 Save those that wooed in saddest sooth 
 A hope forlorn, in all things crossed, 
 And yet resolved to live at any cost, 
 
 The gutter-merchants. At the kerb 
 Fifty and five, a ghastly row. 
 With faces hell could not perturb 
 So rigid were they in their woe. 
 Self-centred stood. Life's undertow 
 Had dragged them down : a few were old 
 A few were young, though fallen so low ; 
 But most were in their prime : they sold 
 Unnecessary trifles manifold. 
 
 A while he watched them wonderstruck ; 
 And scornfully they watched again. 
 Not these the undistinguished ruck 
 And ordinary run of men ! 
 
 54 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 Their mystery seemed beyond his ken : 
 What brought such mortals there, so strong, 
 So resolute ? How, where and when 
 Had fortune thrust them forth among 
 The sufferers unsalvable of wrong ? 
 
 Their eyes on fire, their wrinkles changed 
 To shadowed sculpture in the brute 
 Effulgence of the windows, ranged 
 Together closely, foot by foot. 
 Like giant marionettes, as mute. 
 As quick and as mechanical. 
 Fronting the shops, they made their suit 
 By signs alone ; and each and all 
 Unhuman seemed, austere, asexual. 
 
 And yet in faces drawn and starved 
 The tale of many a lingering fight 
 With circumstance was deeply carved ; 
 Of hazardous attempts to smite 
 A passage through the solid night 
 The outcast beats his head against ; 
 To enter, maugre might and right, 
 A huckstering world, alike incensed 
 By challengers and suppliants, and fenced 
 
 ss 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 About with adamantine hearts. 
 He thought, " As well would it behove 
 The morning to invade the marts ; 
 Or that the dawn should live and move 
 Within an iceberg I Nought can prove 
 More terrible than toil for hire, 
 Or toil at all, to these ; the groove, 
 The settled habit men desire — 
 They find it torture and the nether fire. 
 
 " On every lip, on every brow 
 I see their dreadful secret lurk ; 
 All work to them is thraldom now ; 
 They hate to work, they cannot work. 
 This last expedient still they shirk. 
 And every day resolve to fly 
 From hell : — No hope, no fear, no quirk 
 Of conscience, in the public eye 
 Shall stand us there again who dare to die! 
 
 " But all have made it up with fate 
 Sincerely by the evening ! Soon, 
 Or when the irksome night is late 
 And in the west the wintry moon 
 56 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 Disdains the city, or at noon 
 When the huge welter of the day 
 Goes thundering past them to a tune 
 They cannot sing, the old dismay 
 Victorious seems and death the only way. 
 
 " Diurnally recurrent strife ! 
 Some carry poison ; always there 
 The silent river flows ; now life, 
 Now death, the makeweight of despair 
 Determines ; but the end is ne'er 
 In doubt : — In utter obloquy^ 
 In utter woe, we greatly dare 
 To Ivoe, since those alone are free 
 Who keep the power to he or not to be. 
 
 " Such is their dread, their awful lot — 
 To live with palsied souls and numb 
 Affections ! Higher courage not 
 With sound of prayer or sound of drum 
 In battle or in martyrdom 
 Was ever shown by saint or knight ! 
 They stand at gaze through wearisome 
 Eternities, by ruthless light 
 Betrayed and scorned and shuddered at, invite 
 
 57 
 
LIVERPOOL STREET STATION 
 " The passers-by to spend the pence 
 That keep them tortured in the pit 
 Wherein their supersubtle sense 
 Entrapped them, and the fire their wit 
 Prepared, their pride and passion lit ! 
 Only the miracle, mankind. 
 Can face this hell of the unfit — 
 Only the universe enshrined 
 In lordly flesh and blood and lordly mind". 
 
 58 
 
IN THE CITY 
 
 IS it heaven and its city-porch, 
 Or a ceiling high-hung of old 
 With lacquer fumed and scrolled 
 Of many a festal torch ? 
 
 High heaven it is, and the day 
 With its London doom of smoke 
 No storm can quite revoke, 
 No deluge wash away. 
 
 When their march and song grow mute 
 In the city's labyrinth trapped. 
 The storms themselves are wrapped 
 In draggled shrouds of soot. 
 
 Whirlwinds by lightnings paced 
 To run their wild career, 
 With ragged gossamere 
 Of fine-spun carbon-laced, 
 
 S9 
 
IN THE CITY 
 
 As soon as they quit the shires 
 Are lost beyond all hail : 
 The mightiest tempests quail 
 In the midst of a million fires. 
 
 But the heavens are clear to-day, 
 Though their London doom of smoke 
 No storm can quite revoke, 
 No deluge wash away. 
 
 60 
 
CAIN 
 
 MY sons and daughters ; children's children 
 Cain's 
 Posterity : — God, what a multitude 
 From one man's seed — hiding the sun ! 
 They stop the air, and make this cave a tomb 
 Already! . . . What? I bade them? If I did, 
 'Twas not to stifle me. Stand from the door ! 
 Let in the light, let in the breath, of heaven ! 
 
 Now I remember why I bade them come. 
 Carry me out among them. All the air 
 That mantles earth invisibly, and fills 
 The bosom of the world, would scarce suffice 
 To word with power the thing I have to tell. 
 
 My sight grows keen again : I see them, — these 
 The offspring of my loins : — Enoch and Irad, 
 Sons and companions ; generations ; boys 
 That promise to be great — Jabal and Jubal, 
 
 6i 
 
CAIN 
 And my namesake, Tubalcain. My lusty men, 
 My breeding women and my little ones, 
 My maidens beautiful, my young men chaste, 
 My blessing and God's curse be with you all. 
 Lie down about me, stretched at length ; behind 
 There, sit or kneel ; and let the standers ring 
 Us closely round, that every one may hear. 
 
 My children, I am dying. Very old 
 Am I. A thousand storms have shaken all 
 My members ; and the moments, like a rain 
 That never lessens, falling day and night 
 Throughout the steadfast centuries have cleansed 
 My memory of the chances that befell : — 
 Our sojourns and our warfare and our work, 
 Our triumphs, travels, happinesses, pains. 
 My own especial charge and vigilance 
 For us and ours, as well as intimate 
 Affection, privy thoughts and single life. 
 From my remembrance like a landslip fall. 
 Leaving the naked rock of that event 
 Whereon our fate is founded. Many times 
 I thought to tell you, many times put off. 
 It may be said when I have made it known — 
 
 62 
 
CAIN 
 Often I told myself so : — Had he kept 
 His secret to himself, ourfolkf unswayed 
 By knowledge f might have overborne divine 
 Intention, and the tribal fate decreed. 
 But I say. No. I fought God's will, and built 
 A city east of Eden. Void it stands, — 
 It, and the city, Enoch, which I named 
 After my eldest born, — silent and void 
 Except for beasts and birds : — you would not live 
 In houses, rooted, impotent as trees. 
 Why had God loosed you from the cumbering' 
 
 earth 
 And given you pliant limbs if not to roam 
 From place to place? Caves in the wilderness. 
 And in the desert camps, for sons of mine ! 
 God had ordained it ; deftly given us limbs 
 That He might curse us : — did we grow like trees 
 Where had His fugitives and wanderers been ? 
 God cannot be escaped : He means that I 
 Should tell you. Fables, whispered closely, hum 
 About the watch-fires ; and a lie believed 
 May sow a tribal fate more terrible 
 Than errantry like ours. This too, I know, 
 My children,-^that I dare not, cannot, die 
 
 63 
 
CAIN 
 Until I tell you : — and I wish to die, 
 Being forwearied of the world and time. 
 
 I had a brother, Abel, whom I loved 
 
 As no man shall be loved by man again. 
 
 Companions were we when the world was }'oung. 
 
 And only us of our nativity 
 
 To love the other for the other's sakie : 
 
 Our gentle mates were second in our hearts. 
 
 Younger than I, he was the hardier ; 
 
 And I in everything gave way, well pleased 
 
 That he should still excel, — and with his pride 
 
 In excellence well pleased. Our thoughts of God 
 
 Alone divided us, as such thoughts will — 
 
 Father from son, kindred from kindred, folk 
 
 From folk, until the world or God shall cease. 
 
 I dug and planted ; studied nature's way ; 
 And out of meagre grasses fostered grain, 
 Enhanced the zest, augmented and refined 
 The substances of fruits and roots and herbs. 
 My brother idled, angry in the sun 
 And sullen in the shade. At times he gazed 
 On Eden half a day in ecstasy ; 
 
 64 
 
CAIN 
 Or dark with sin hereditary, wrath 
 And sorrow intermingled, frowned on heaven 
 Until he fell down pulseless, breathless, dead 
 It seemed, by fighting passions hacked and slain. 
 In rarer moods he wrought with me, perturbed 
 By mystery of the blossoms that unveiled 
 Such tender beauty, and with fragrance bore 
 The seed the earth enwombed : it maddened him 
 To watch how nature did, to know the thing 
 Achieved and not to understand : — " Shall folk, 
 The human fruit of blossoms that unite. 
 Be in the earth enwombed and live again ? " 
 
 " Not as the plants are we ", I answered still 
 His obdurate demand. " Released from earth. 
 Our birth, our growth, our life are in the air, 
 Though when we die the soil reclaims us : God 
 Appointed it. But in our seed we live 
 As blossoms do " : — an all-atoning truth 
 That only tortured him. He knew no ease 
 In life, no respite found from doubt and dread 
 Except in force expended, powers employed. 
 Loving the heats and dangers of the chase, 
 Deep-bosomed, swift of foot, he overtook 
 E 6S 
 
CAIN 
 The leopard flying for life ; the lion feared 
 To meet him ; from their bloody dens he dragged 
 The fiercest beasts and killed them weaponless. 
 
 At dawn upon an altar built of turf 
 And grafted in the earth, I daily spread 
 For God a grateful table, fruit and corn 
 In season. But my brother worshipped not 
 With me : — " I serve the Lord by killing things ", 
 He told me when I asked him how he praised 
 The maker of the world. " God's will it is ", 
 He said, " that all His creatures should destroy 
 Each other : hoofed-and-horned devour the herb 
 Fattening themselves for fanged-and-clawed ; the 
 
 night 
 Devours the day ; the day, the night ; I kill 
 All things that are — beasts, fishes, birds, grain, 
 
 fruit ; 
 Darkness itself with fire I can dismember. 
 God's will is light and darkness, life and death : 
 Two utmost joys, to kill and to beget, 
 I share with God, creator and destroyer ". 
 
 " TBut God is love ", I said. "Seek not for God 
 In bloodshed. In the rapture of desire, 
 
 66 
 
CAIN 
 In busy peace of heart by day, in dreams 
 By night that sweeten sleep with paradise 
 Discover God ". 
 
 " No ; God is strength", he said. 
 " Hunger and carnage, lust and strife are God 
 Inspiring all His creatures, strong or weak, 
 In their divine degree". 
 
 " Save man ! " I cried. 
 "Although with skins of slaughtered beasts we 
 
 veil 
 Our nakedness, against the weather pitch 
 Pavilions in the desert, we devour 
 No flesh, nor stain our lips with blood ; the earth's 
 Benignant bosom feeds us tenderly ". 
 
 "Like sheep and kine — big-bellied things, the 
 
 prey 
 Of lean ferocity ! Since we can kill "... 
 He looked at me askance, a splintered fire 
 Burst from his eyes athwart the dawning thought : 
 Unwonted laughter shimmered in his face, 
 Like heat that vibrates from the sun-soaked earth 
 And makes a presence of the throbbing air. 
 
 67 
 
CAIN 
 "Since we can kill?" I echoed, knowing well 
 His dreadful meaning. "What you dare not 
 
 speak 
 You will not do ! " 
 
 " The thoughts that teem with deeds 
 Fulfil themselves unspoken. God delights 
 To rend and tear, to lap the smoking blood. 
 God's a voracious God ; the uddered things 
 And haunched, the sagging entrails are His prey 
 Assigned ; the tiger and the lion, His fangs, 
 His appetite and maw. Were we to dip 
 Our mouths in blood, like those beloved beasts, 
 It would rejoice the hungry heart of God. 
 And for our own behoof, — if flesh of fruit, 
 The blood of berries, mellow sap of pulse 
 And marrow of the grain can nourish strength 
 Like ours, what keener zest, what ampler might 
 A more compact, a more essential fare 
 Might goad our palates with and prime our nerves! 
 The loins of timid things that chew the cud 
 Mature the pasturage we cannot eat 
 For our superior nurture. I shall flesh 
 My appetite — God's appetite in me ". 
 
 68 
 
CAIN 
 " Not God's ! " I cried in wrath. " The God of man 
 Lions and tigers in his similitude 
 Would never frame ". 
 
 "In whose resemblance, then? 
 Brother, God shaped His wanton, ravening beasts 
 In likeness of His cruelty — the mark. 
 The very soul and character of God. 
 So sure am I that God designed His men 
 To feed on flesh and blood as lions do 
 That I shall challenge it. You offer God 
 The sweetness and the ripeness of the earth 
 Upon your turfen table, and salute 
 The dawn. To-morrow at your side 
 I shall upon an altar built of stone — 
 The monument of what must there befall — 
 A living victim sacrifice, while both 
 Entreat a sign from heaven, nor cease to pray 
 Until God's will and pleasure are made known. 
 How say you? Dare you put God to the test? " 
 
 " In His great name !" I cried, assured that now 
 The man I loved would know the heart of God, 
 So human, so divine — as I believed. 
 
 -"eg 
 
CAIN 
 Wet with the vapour that involved the earth, 
 A sheaf of corn across my shoulders slung, 
 With apples in a basket in my right, 
 And in my other hand a bunch of grapes, 
 I climbed the hill before the dawn, and laid 
 My offering on my altar, sure of heaven. 
 My brother followed, leading in a withe, 
 A white bull, whiter than the rolling fog 
 That wreathed its horns. He spoke not; nor 
 
 did I. 
 But when the touch of morning lit the crests 
 Of Havilah o'erhanging Eden, doubt 
 Assailed me suddenly. I crushed the grapes 
 In eager hands, staining the golden corn. 
 The ruddy fruit — a rite then first observed 
 Unwittingly, for all my being shook 
 With abject fear of God, unknown before. 
 But soon about to overcast the world — 
 Though not on us the woeful shadow lies : 
 Accursed of God we earnestly disclaim 
 The cowardice that hallows vengeful wrath 
 And terror of the inconceivable. 
 It was in ignorance I crushed the grapes. 
 Inspired by God against my conscious will 
 
 70 
 
CAIN 
 To pour out blood before Him. Yet I spoke 
 My prayer — our prayer : — together children, pray 
 Once more with me — with Cain before he dies : — 
 " O God of men, we thank Thee for the earth, 
 For life and death, for labour and for rest. 
 For day and night, for seasons, times and tides ; 
 Empower our souls with faith ; direct our steps 
 In ways of pleasantness and paths of peace ; 
 And thine shall be the praise for ever more, 
 Creator of the world, the just, the true, 
 The merciful, the gracious God of men ". 
 
 I made my invocation, unaware 
 How insolent it was ; and on my knees 
 Implored a token of acceptance. Through 
 The valley rolled the mist ; a pearly smoke 
 O'ercanopied the guarded bowers, and depths 
 Profound of sylvan shadow, that the day. 
 Unveiling, deepened ; sundered mountain-tops, 
 Pellucid in the crimson gorge of dawn, 
 Above the earth like pendent meteors burned ; 
 The Pishon wound among the woods below, 
 The mirror of the morning streaming blood. 
 With amber and with beryl-stone enchased. 
 
 71 
 
CAIN 
 But God was silent and allowed no sign. 
 Then as the sun surmounted Havilah, 
 My brother, kneeling strongly on the bull's 
 Ascendant shoulder, bore the creature down : 
 His left hand gripped its underjaw, and bent 
 Its tossing head backward and stretched its throat 
 His right implanted in its curded neck 
 The ivory blade, that out he drew again 
 Ensanguined all its length, swiftly and smooth 
 As though the spouting blood had thrust it forth 
 His grip upon its muzzle choked the bull's 
 Affrighted roar, his puissance overcame 
 Its agony, and held it till it died, 
 Upon the dripping altar offered up, 
 Its milk-white dewlap and its milk-white flank 
 With bloody foliage strown and flowers of death 
 
 Mastering his bosom as a rough-wrought sea 
 Recovers tidal measure when the storm 
 Desists, my brother tarried, vigilant 
 To repossess himself; then stepping slow 
 With majesty and grace unseen on earth 
 Before that morn of world-transforming chance. 
 He left the altar, and flung his looks aloft 
 
 72 
 
CAIN 
 Where sumptuously the vintage of the east 
 Empurpled all the peaks of Havilah, 
 And westward where belated orbs of night, 
 So limpid was the heaven-spanned firmament, 
 Between Assyrian summits darkling swung 
 Their crystal lamps. The beauty of the world 
 Rebuked him for a moment — or I thought 
 It did : the pause, the doubt, if doubt or pause 
 Began, was seen by me, not felt by him. 
 And died upon its birth. 
 
 " Almighty God ", 
 With hardihood devout he said, " accept 
 This blood that steams new-spilt, and this. Thy 
 
 brute, 
 New-slain to please Thee ; and bestow a sign 
 Of Thy acceptance that Thy men may know 
 How strenuous, how absolute Thou art, 
 A God alive, an active God, a God 
 Delighting in a bloody sacrifice. 
 As Thy ferocious creatures take delight 
 In slaughter and the flesh of rams and bulls ". 
 
 Forthwith while yet the coil of breath, that bore 
 His supplicative arrogance, aspired 
 
 73 
 
CAIN 
 Unseen in the unseen, the cloudless top 
 And tented blue of heaven, disparting, showed 
 As in a fruit that bursts, the sanguine seed 
 And crimson heart of glory, lucid shapes 
 Celestial and pavilions thronged with life, — 
 A transient revelation, but beheld 
 In vision still, as obvious as the sun, 
 By my surviving eyes that wait on death. 
 Heaven opened and heaven closed : adown the 
 
 gulf 
 Unmeasured and aerial steep of space 
 A saffron flame, in figure like a frond 
 The wind inwraps and tapers skywards, fell 
 Directly on my brother's altar, lapped 
 The hissing blood as with a hundred tongues. 
 And, fawning o'er the carcase, burnt it up. 
 Transfigured by acceptance of the blood 
 He spilt, my brother laughed aloud, and called 
 Exultantly on God. " Divine destroyer. 
 Reveller in life and death, let me partake 
 With Thee ! " he cried. Dropping the ivory 
 
 blade 
 That broached the creature's life, before the fire 
 Had licked the flesh from all the blackened ribs, 
 
 74 
 
CAIN 
 He grasped a smouldering handful and scorched 
 
 his mouth 
 With God's accepted sacrifice. Appalled 
 To see a man, my brother, taste the food 
 Of savage brutes, my senses failed, my heart 
 Stood still a space ; then thundering in my ears 
 A tide of passion swept me from myself, 
 A thousand judgments like a gathered storm 
 Burst in my mind :— " If God", I thought and 
 
 seized 
 My brother's blade, "delights in blood of beasts, 
 The blood of men should fill the cup divine 
 With happiness ineffable ". Straightway 
 I flung an arm about my brother's neck. 
 And drove the bloodstained ivory through his 
 
 heart. 
 He fell without a murmur : the breath of life 
 Escaped his grinding teeth, his parted lips ; 
 The wonder in his eyes dismays me still, — 
 And overwhelmed then. But when I looked 
 To see the vaulted base of paradise 
 Re-open, and a sheaf of fire descend. 
 No fissure, chink or crevice, broke the blue 
 Immensity that hid the infinite. 
 
 75 
 
CAIN 
 Thus God refused my brother's blood — the 
 
 man 
 I loved, and killed that he might live divine 
 Eternally, a part of God ; for that, 
 Within the madness of the murder, sang 
 Like music in a tempest. God preferred 
 A bull's blood to my brother's : — still I think. 
 Old, dying as I am, something went wrong 
 In heaven. Howbeit when I saw him dead 
 And unaccepted, not the saltest tear 
 Assuaged the fiery horror of myself 
 That melted all my strength : in thunder drops 
 The sweat splashed from my brow ; a core of 
 
 pain 
 Without remission rising in my gorge. 
 Hot, hard and noisome sickened me ; I beat 
 My breast ; I fell ; I rose ; I fled, and plunged 
 In wooded darkness where the thicket wove 
 A thorny canopy. My fate, my doom ! — 
 God had me there alone, unhelped by light. 
 By power and beauty of the widespread world. 
 Immediately the still and awful voice. 
 Whose accents are omnipotence, besieged 
 My soul and said, "Thy brother, where is he?" 
 
 76 
 
CAIN 
 I answered, as men answer God, at once, 
 " I know not, I. Am I my brother's keeper?" 
 
 "What hast thou done?" God said. "Thy 
 
 brother's blood, 
 That crieth from the ground, hath cursed the 
 
 ground 
 For thee. When thou shalt till the ground that 
 
 oped 
 Her mouth to drink thy brother's blood, poured 
 
 by thy hand, 
 Henceforth it shall not yield thee of her strength. 
 A fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be 
 Upon the earth I " 
 
 I answered in the rapt 
 Despair the presence and the ire of God 
 Begat, " I know that my iniquity 
 Can never be forgiven. Behold, since Thou 
 Hast reft from me the favour of the ground 
 And turned Thy countenance away, and I 
 Shall be a wanderer, it shall come to pass 
 That whosoever findeth me shall slay me ". 
 
 77 
 
CAIN 
 "Therefore", said God, "whoever slayeth Cain 
 On him a sevenfold vengeance shall be taken ". 
 
 With that God set His mark upon my brow. 
 Which none behold unawed or look on twice. 
 
 I have told the truth ; no more remains to tell : 
 
 God's curse is on us ; and we make it do. 
 
 Our errant life is not unhappy ; fear. 
 
 That harrows others, is to us unknown. 
 
 Being close to God by reason of His curse. 
 
 Sometimes I think that God Himself is cursed, 
 
 For all His things go wrong. We cannot guess ; 
 
 He is very God of God, not God of men : 
 
 We feel His power. His inhumanity ; 
 
 Yet, being men, we fain would think Him good. 
 
 Since in imagination we conceive 
 
 A merciful, a gracious God of men, 
 
 It may be that our prayer and innocent life 
 
 Will shame Him into goodness in the end. 
 
 Meantime His vengeance is upon us ; so. 
 
 My blessing and God's curse be with you all. 
 
 78 
 
ECLOGUES 
 
 THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 
 BERTRAM. LIONEL. SANDY. CYRIL. VIVIAN 
 
 BERTRAM 
 
 "\7'OUR evolution, still so crude 
 
 -'- In civic life, prefers to sit 
 In murky air of muslin stewed " 
 With soot and sulphur of the pit. 
 
 LIONEL 
 
 Why, this is only London's own 
 
 Appurtenance in Janiveer 
 And winter months — a want of tone, 
 
 A jaundice of the atmosphere. 
 
 VIVIAN 
 
 And every winter cheerful folk, 
 
 Six millions powerless to escape. 
 Upon this clammy muslin choke, 
 
 This filthy air of sodden crape. 
 79 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 BERTRAM 
 
 Expecting no imperial cure 
 From any corporate King Log 
 
 They undergo it, forte et dure, 
 The torture of the London fog. 
 
 And though habitual croakers croak, 
 
 A metaphysical desire 
 Not to consume our proper smoke, 
 
 Save when the chimney goes on fire. 
 
 Through urban and suburban deeps 
 Sub-conscious in the minds of all. 
 
 Explains the tolerance that keeps 
 Our fog a hardy annual. 
 
 LIONEL 
 
 I love the fog : in every street 
 
 Shrill muffled cries and shapes forlorn. 
 The frosted hoof with stealthy beat, 
 
 The hollow-sounding motor-horn : 
 
 A fog that lasts till, gently wrung 
 
 By Pythian pangs, we realise 
 That Doomsday somewhere dawns among 
 
 The systems and the galaxies, 
 
 80 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 And ruin at the swiftest rate 
 
 The chartered destinies pursue ; 
 While as for us, our final fate 
 
 Already fixed with small ado, 
 
 Spills on our heads no wrathful cup, 
 Nor wrecks us on a fiery shore, 
 
 But leaves us simply swallowed up 
 In London fog for evermore. 
 
 CYRIL 
 
 The admirable errantry 
 
 Of London's climate who can sing? 
 From fogs of filthy muslin free 
 
 Elastic as a morn of Spring, 
 
 The weather like a dazzling bride 
 Undid the lonely winter, threw 
 
 The casemate of the orient wide 
 And made the enchanted world anew. 
 
 But yesterday, so quick and so 
 Chromatic is the climate here — 
 
 From russet mud to silver snow. 
 From radiant suns to fogs austere. 
 
 F 8l 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 LIOInTEL 
 
 I watched the morning yesterday 
 Where from the ample stair you look 
 
 Across the Park beneath the gray 
 Ungainly column of the Duke : 
 
 You see him like a stylite true 
 Impaled upon his pillar stand ; — 
 
 It seems to pierce him through and through, 
 The rod that braves the levin-brand. 
 
 Sunlit the other column glowed 
 
 Intensely, lifting to the skies 
 The admiral who swept the road 
 
 Of empire clear for centuries. 
 
 Entangled on the Surrey-side 
 The eager day a moment hung. 
 
 Then struck in hate his ardent stride 
 And round the southern chimneys swung. 
 
 A silvery weft of finest lawn. 
 
 So thin, so phantom-like, became 
 
 Ethereal mystery scarcely drawn 
 
 Athwart the morning's saffron flame ; 
 
 S2 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 The Palace and the Abbey lost 
 
 Their character of masonry, 
 Transformed to glittering shadows tossed 
 
 And buoyant on a magic sea ; 
 
 And park and lake and precincts old 
 Of Westminster were all arrayed 
 
 In spectral weeds of pearl and gold 
 And airy drifts of amber braid. 
 
 BERTRAM 
 
 Ghastly and foul, as Hecate's ban 
 Pernicious are our fogs ; but sweet 
 
 And wonderful the mists that can 
 Imparadise a London street : 
 
 The fabrics winnowed sunbeams work 
 Of urban dew and smoky air ; 
 
 The opalescences that lurk 
 
 In many a court and sombre square ; 
 
 The tissued dawn that gems encrust. 
 The violet wreaths of noon, the haze 
 
 Of emerald and topaz dust 
 That shrouds the evening distances ; 
 
 And gloom in baths of light annealed . . 
 83 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 Enter SANDY 
 
 LIONEL 
 
 From top to toe one travel-stain 
 You come ! And whence ? 
 
 SANDY 
 
 An outland weald 
 I come from, and a dateless reign 
 
 That modes and periods never touch. 
 
 BERTRAM 
 
 From Epping Forest, I'll be sworn. 
 The wilderness you haunt so much ! 
 
 SANDY 
 
 No ; from a less familiar bourne : 
 
 A Sussex chace renowned of old 
 Where withering innovation halts ; 
 
 A tract of mingled wood and wold. 
 Of ragged heaths and ferny vaults. 
 84 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 
 LIONEL 
 
 St. Leonard's Forest by your shoes 
 Over the latchet daubed with earth ! 
 
 I know it well : the Mole, the Ouse, 
 Arun and Adur have their birth 
 
 Among its silting springs ; and there 
 The nightingale has never sung, 
 
 They say, so humid is the air. 
 So dank the woods with ivy hung. 
 
 In summer-time you lightly tread 
 
 On moss as green as emerald, 
 And soft as silken velvet spread 
 
 Along the forest chancel, stalled 
 
 With bowers of thorn and laurel-tree ; 
 
 And roomier and loftier 
 Than forest aisles are wont to be, 
 
 The green groined roof of beech and fir 
 
 Admits a dulcet twilight filled 
 With golden motes and beryl hues, 
 
 That through the darkling thickets gild 
 Arun and Adur, Mole and Ouse. 
 8S 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 SANDY 
 
 When I went out from Horsham town 
 A northern blast of winter's breath 
 
 Blew low across the open down 
 As hard as hate, as cold as death. 
 
 Close to the land the firmament 
 
 Like a camp-ceiling clung ; and nigh 
 
 The eaves of the horizon, bent 
 
 Like frowning brows, the ashen sky. 
 
 Through ruined loopholes scattered wide 
 A pallid gleam ; but as the path. 
 
 Leaving the highway, leapt aside 
 To gain the forest, winter's wrath. 
 
 By sheltering hedgerows doubly balked. 
 
 Became a legendary thing, 
 And for a while beside me walked 
 
 The very presence of the spring. 
 
 A bridge that spans a pebbled burn 
 The threshold of the forest is ; 
 
 And there like some daedalian urn. 
 Or sangreal of fragrances, 
 
 86 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 A deeply sunk, a vaulted dell 
 
 Possessed the summer's inmost soul — 
 A captive, like the roseal smell 
 
 That haunts a seeming-empty bowl : 
 
 Though all the roses, plucked and rent. 
 Are squandered, yet our essence knows 
 
 And greets the pure material scent, 
 Which is the spirit of the rose. 
 
 Within the forest-chancel, stalled 
 With bowers of evergreen and laid 
 
 With lustrous living emerald. 
 As rich a moss as spring displayed. 
 
 No green groined roof of fir and beech 
 Reflected bronze and beryl hues, 
 
 That could through darkling thickets reach 
 Arun and Adur, Mole and Ouse : 
 
 Unthatched, instead of summer's leaves, 
 
 A roof, with ebon rafters bare, 
 Allowed the light in frosted sheaves 
 
 To silver all the wintry air. 
 87 
 
THE FEAST OF ST. HILARY 
 With clapping wings doves wheeled about 
 
 Between the pine-tops and the skies ; 
 And blackbirds flitted in and out 
 
 The underwood with guttural cries ; 
 
 A throstle had begun to build 
 
 Though still untimed ; but loud and long 
 The eager storm-cock sang and filled 
 
 The forest with his splendid song ; 
 
 While spring, in winter's bosom warm, 
 Prologued in bough and bole and root 
 
 The pregnant trance of trees that form 
 The summer's foliage, flower and fruit. 
 
 BERTRAM 
 
 Harvest in winter's bosom sleeps. 
 While time his patient vigil keeps. 
 
 88 
 
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 
 ERNEST. JULIAN 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 VIRGINIA lives in a square ; 
 I harbour at hand in a street : 
 And spring has begun over there ; 
 
 So love like a pestilence sweet 
 Envenoms the neighbouring air. 
 
 ERNEST 
 
 No pestilence, Julian ! Greet 
 
 The coming of Spring with delight. 
 
 Have done with your modish display 
 The cynic's intelligent spite 
 
 Arrives by the miriest way : 
 The ferment that works in the night 
 
 Of a prodigal, desolate day, 
 
 A morbid, acidulent scorn, 
 
 Inhabits the vinegared lees 
 In bosoms condignly forlorn — 
 89 
 
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 
 JULIAN 
 
 In bosoms philosophy frees 
 From the burden to which we are born ! 
 
 ERNEST 
 
 In bosoms that nothing can please, 
 
 Being empty of pleasure and sunk 
 
 In themselves ; being wizened and frail 
 
 Like vats when the wine has been drunk- 
 Being warped and unspeakably stale 
 
 Like vats in desuetude shrunk. 
 Let the season and nature prevail ; 
 
 Let the winepress of youth overrun ; — 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 If the valves be corroded with rust, 
 And the power and gearing undone ! 
 
 ERNEST 
 
 Empurpled with stains of the must 
 My fancy, forestalling the sun — 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 In the city we take him on trust ! 
 90 
 
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 
 ERNEST 
 
 Disheartened the fog with a glance, 
 And tinctured with opulent dyes 
 
 Of the lily, the rose and the raunce 
 The sombre, the tenebrous skies — 
 
 With the tricoloured blazon of France, 
 And the light of a paramour's eyes ! 
 
 For this is St. Valentine's Day, 
 And my sweetheart came into the lane ; 
 
 As I went by the speediest way, 
 Being late for the morning train, 
 
 Diana, in sweet disarray. 
 The wonder of women, was fain 
 
 To see and be seen of me first ! 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 How happy to love and be loved ! 
 How wretched is he, how accursed, 
 Whom destiny handles ungloved ! 
 
 ERNEST 
 
 The highest encounter the worst ; 
 For they must be sifted and proved, 
 91 
 
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 
 While the rabble are shaken with ease 
 Through a wide-meshed riddle of fate. 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 O spare your proverbial pleas 
 And the wisdom that wiseacres prate ! 
 
 ERNEST 
 
 You said that philosophy frees — 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 From a passion I would not abate 
 
 For the wealth of the world all told ? 
 
 From the exquisite alchemy pain, 
 That tortures the dross into gold ? 
 
 I spoke in a negligent vein, 
 For I love like the lovers of old, 
 
 Adoring a woman's disdain, 
 
 That crushes the doughtiest hope. 
 
 ERNEST 
 
 You speak like a vassal of words. 
 The indolent slave of a trope ! 
 92 
 
ST, VALENTINE'S DAY 
 Exalt your irresolute thirds 
 Into fifths and their jubilant scope ; 
 And learn of St. Valentine's birds 
 
 That love is the herald of joy. 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 The pursuivant rather of care ! 
 
 ERNEST 
 
 You must brood on her beauty and cloy 
 
 Your fancy, extinguish despair 
 With obdurate visions ; destroy 
 
 Yourself in her excellence rare ; 
 
 Be buried in dreams of her worth ! 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 My heart with her excellence bleeds ; 
 My dreams of her people the earth. 
 
 And the curse is, there's nothing she needs ; 
 She is rich and a woman of birth. 
 
 While I am the son of my deeds. 
 
 93 
 
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY 
 ERNEST 
 
 Achieve then a sire of renown ; 
 
 Perform to the height and be great, 
 You have fought — 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 And defeat was my crown ! 
 
 When, naked, I wrestled with fate 
 The destinies trampled me down : — 
 
 I fought in the van and was great, 
 And I won, though I wore no crown. 
 
 In the lists of the world ; for fate 
 And the destinies trampled me down — 
 The myrmidons trampled me down. 
 
 94 
 
SNOW 
 
 " T ^ THO affirms that crystals are alive? " 
 
 V V I affirm it, let who will deny : — 
 Crystals are engendered, wax and thrive. 
 Wane and wither ; I have seen them die. 
 
 Trust me, masters, crystals have their day. 
 Eager to attain the perfect norm, 
 
 Lit with purpose, potent to display 
 Facet, angle, colour, beauty, form. 
 
 II 
 
 Water-crystals need for flower and root 
 Sixty clear degrees, no less, no more ; 
 
 Snow, so fickle, still in this acute 
 Angle thinks, and learns no other lore : 
 95 
 
SNOW 
 Such its life, and such its pleasure is, 
 
 Such its art and tra£Sc, such its gain, 
 Evermore in new conjunctions this 
 
 Admirable angle to maintain. 
 
 Crystalcraft in every flower and flake 
 Snow exhibits, of the welkin free : 
 
 Crystalline are crystals for the sake. 
 All and singular, of crystalry. 
 
 Yet does every crystal of the snow 
 Individualise, a seedling sown 
 
 Broadcast, but instinct with power to grow 
 Beautiful in beauty of its own. 
 
 Every flake with all its prongs and dints 
 Burns ecstatic as a new-lit star : 
 
 Men are not more diverse, finger-prints 
 More dissimilar than snow-flakes are. 
 
 Worlds of men and snow endure, increase 
 
 Woven of power and passion to defy 
 Time and travail : only races cease. 
 
 Individual men and crystals die. 
 
 96 
 
SNOW 
 
 III 
 
 Jewelled shapes of snow whose feathery showers, 
 Fallen or falling wither at a breath, 
 
 All afraid are they, and loth as flowers 
 Beasts and men to tread the way to death. 
 
 Once I saw upon an object-glass, 
 Martyred underneath a microscope, 
 
 One elaborate snow-flake slowly pass, 
 Dying hard, beyond the reach of hope. 
 
 Still from shape to shape the crystal changed. 
 Writhing in its agony ; and still, 
 
 Less and less elaborate, arranged 
 Potently the angle of its will. 
 
 Tortured to a simple final form. 
 Angles six and six divergent beams, 
 
 Lo, in death it touched the perfect norm 
 Verifying all its crystal dreams ! 
 G 97 
 
SNOW 
 
 IV 
 Such the noble tragedy of one 
 
 Martyred snow-flake. Who can tell the fate 
 Heinous and uncouth of showers undone, 
 
 Fallen in cities ! — showers that expiate 
 
 Errant lives from polar worlds adrift 
 
 Where the great millennial snows abide ; 
 
 Castaways from mountain-chains that lift 
 Snowy summits in perennial pride ; 
 
 Nomad snows, or snows in evil day 
 
 Born to urban ruin, to be tossed. 
 Trampled, shovelled, ploughed and swept away 
 
 Down the seething sewers : all the frost 
 
 Flowers of heaven melted up with lees, 
 Offal, recrement, but every flake 
 
 Showing to the last in fixed degrees 
 Perfect crystals for the crystal's sake. 
 98 
 
SNOW 
 
 V 
 Usefulness of snow is but a chance 
 
 Here in temperate climes with winter sent, 
 Sheltering earth's prolonged hibernal trance ; 
 
 All utility is accident. 
 
 Sixty clear degrees the joyful snow, 
 
 Practising economy of means, 
 Fashions endless beauty in, and so 
 
 Glorifies the universe with scenes 
 
 Arctic and antarctic : stainless shrouds, 
 Ermine woven in silvery frost, attire 
 
 Peaks in every land among the clouds 
 Crowned with snows to catch the morning's fire. 
 
 99 
 
THE TESTAMENT OF 
 
 SIR SIMON SIMPLEX 
 
 CONCERNING AUTOMOBILISM 
 
 THAT railways are inadequate appears 
 Indubitable now. For sixty years 
 Their comfort grew until the train de luxe 
 Arrived, arousing in conducted Cook's, 
 And other wholesale, tourists, an envious smart 
 For here they recognised the perfect art 
 And science of land-travel. Now we sing 
 A greater era, hail a happier Spring. 
 The motor-car reveals ineptitude 
 In railway-trains ; and travellers conclude 
 The railway is archaic : strictly true. 
 Although the reason sounds as false as new : — 
 Railways are democratic, vulgar, laic ; 
 And who can doubt Democracy's archaic? 
 
 100 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMOBILISM 
 The railway was the herald and the sign, 
 And powerful agent in the swift decline 
 Of Europe and the West. The future sage 
 Will blame sententiously the railway age, 
 Preachers upon its obvious vices pounce, 
 And poets, wits and journalists pronounce 
 The nineteenth century in prose and rhyme 
 The most unhappy period of time. 
 That nations towering once in pomp and pride 
 Of monarchs, rank and breeding, should subside 
 To one dead undistinguishable horde 
 Sans sceptre, mitre, coronet and sword. 
 Reverting to a pithecoidal state 
 May be the purpose of recurrent fate ; 
 But that such folks should to themselves appear 
 Progressing toward a great millennial year 
 Is just the bitter-sweet, the chilly-hot, 
 The subtle metaphysic of the plot. 
 
 The last age saw the last stage of the fit 
 That pestered, when the Roman Empire split. 
 The catalytic centuries : the strange 
 Insanity that fed on secular change ; 
 The general paralysis of men 
 
CONCERNING AUTO MOBI LI SM 
 That ended in the railway and the wen 
 Called London : from the Tiber to the Thames 
 From dreaming empire to delirious aims 
 That move the laughter of the careless fates, 
 And effervesce in socialistic pates. 
 
 But convalescence with the car begins 
 And petrol expiates our railway sins. 
 Before we know we shall with joy behold 
 A world as sane as any world of old ; 
 From labour and electoral problems free, 
 A world the fibre of whose health shall be, 
 No Will to be the Mob, but mastering all, 
 A Will to be the Individual ; 
 For every Mob exhales a poisonous breath, 
 And Socialism is decadence, is death : 
 The Mob expropriates, degrades, destroys ; 
 The Individual conquers, makes, enjoys. 
 Not till the motor was the contrast plain, 
 Because the separate classes of the train 
 Deceived us with a choice of company ; 
 .And, when he liked, the tame celebrity, 
 The genius, man of wealth, aristocrat, 
 By means of tips through any journey sat 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMO B I LI SM 
 In cornered state ; or with sufficient pelf 
 Could purchase a compartment for himself. 
 He rather would have deemed himself a snob 
 Than that the train could turn him into Mob, 
 Till automotion's privacy and pride 
 Exposed the grossness of the railway ride ; 
 For 'twas the freedom of the motor-car 
 That showed how tyrannous the railways are. 
 
 To go by train from one place to another 
 You have to brave the station's smoke and smother 
 The train derides you there ; 'twill never come 
 To pick you up, nor turn, to see you home, 
 A single wheel : the getting under way, 
 The true vexation of a holiday. 
 The stolid train permits you to deplore ; 
 But with your automobile at the door — 
 Why, there you are, nor need you stir a foot, 
 Man and portmanteau instantly en route! 
 You buy a ticket if you go by train 
 At some offensive loophole, which you gain 
 After prolonged attendance in a queue — 
 Whatever class you take, a motley crew : 
 And to await one's turn, like patient Job, 
 
 103 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMOBI LI SM 
 Unites one with a vengeance to the Mob. 
 Then you may miss the train ; hut you must wait 
 lis advent and departure prompt or late. 
 The motor soothes, the railway racks, your nerves ; 
 The train commands, the automobile serves. 
 The automobile nurses all caprice. 
 And gives the longest life a second lease ; 
 Indulges indolence, and even in me 
 Increases individuality. 
 I thought and many my opinion shared 
 That the deceased politic who declared 
 That all were Socialists, had told, perhaps, 
 A fib, exploited in a studied lapse 
 Of platform declamation as a sop 
 To catch erratic voters on the hop, 
 The strained politeness of a caustic mind, 
 A dead-lift effort to say something kind. 
 'Twas more than that : not only had we learned 
 To suffer Socialism ; our souls discerned 
 A something fine about it; egoists even 
 Perceived therein at last a mundane heaven. 
 
 " Life is a railway journey ", genius thought — 
 (The erring genius very cheaply bought 
 
 104 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMO BI LISM 
 With gilded apples of Asphaltites) — 
 "Thieves bearing swag, and poets sprouting bays, 
 The ring, the cabinet, scortatory dames, 
 Bishops, sectarians of a myriad names. 
 Bankers and brokers, merchants, mendicants. 
 Booked in the same train like a swarm of ants ; 
 First, second, third, class, mass and mob expressed 
 Together to the Islands of the Blest — 
 Each passenger provided with a groat 
 To pass the Stygian stile for Charon's boat. 
 Or broad or narrow as the gauge may run. 
 None leaves the track without disaster ; none 
 Escapes a single stoppage on the way ; 
 And none arrives before his neighbour may. 
 In the guard's van my sacred luggage knocks 
 Against the tourist's traps, the bagman's box ; 
 And people with inferior aims to mine 
 Partake the rapid transit of the line. 
 But this is culture of the social school. 
 And teaches me to lead my life by rule 
 Empirical, of positive descent 
 And altruistic self-embezzlement. 
 Life is a railway journey : I rejoice 
 That folk whose purpose, visage, clothes and voice 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMO BI LI SM 
 Offend me will continue to offend 
 In the same train until the journey's end ". 
 
 So spoke the genius in pathetic rage. — 
 The socialistic and the railway age 
 Were certainly coeval ; machinery too 
 Equated communism ; and every new 
 Development of electricity 
 
 Was welcomed by the Mob with three times three 
 Convinced the world at last was through the wood- 
 Right through to Universal Brotherhood ! 
 
 Conceive it : — Universal Brotherhood, 
 
 With everybody feeble, kind and good ! 
 
 I, even I, Sir Simon Simplex, know 
 
 The world would end to-day if that were so. 
 
 What spur does man require, what stinging zest 
 
 To do still better than his level best ? 
 
 Why, enemies ; and if he has them not 
 
 He must unearth and beat them till they're hot ; 
 
 For only enmity can train and trounce 
 
 The cortex and the muscle to an ounce. 
 
 Let Socialists deny, mistaking peace. 
 
 That only with the world will warfare cease ; 
 
 io6 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMOBILISM 
 When we behold the battle-flags unfurled 
 We know the fates phlebotomise the world, 
 And alternate with peace's patent pill, 
 The old heroic cure for every ill. 
 
 Life was a railway journey ; foe and friend. 
 
 Infected with nostalgy of the end, 
 
 Awaited patiently the crack of doom ; 
 
 But thank the powers that be, the motor boom, 
 
 Predestined to postpone the judgment-day. 
 
 Arrived in time to show a better way. 
 
 And when the automobile came we found 
 
 Our incorrupt opinion safe and sound. 
 
 Inoculated only by the schism, 
 
 For ever proof against all Socialism. 
 
 The motor stops the decadence : not all 
 
 Are in the same train with the prodigal. 
 
 The Christian scientist, the souteneur, 
 
 The Gothamite, the man from anywhere, 
 
 Domestic Gill and idiomatic Jack, 
 
 The wheedling knave, the sneak, the hectoring 
 
 quack ; 
 The man of broader mind and farther goal 
 Is not entrained with Lubin Littlesoul ; 
 
 107 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMO BI LIS M 
 Your gentleman by birth with quickened sense, 
 Refined requirements and abundant pence, 
 And men of faculty and swelling aim 
 Who conquer riches, power, position, fame. 
 Are not entrained with loafers, quibblers, cranks, 
 Nor with the Mob who never leave the ranks. 
 With plodding dullness, unambitious ease. 
 And discontented incapacities. 
 
 Goodwill is in the blood, in you and me. 
 And most in men of wealth and pedigree ; 
 So rich and poor, men, women, age and youth 
 Imagined some ingredient of truth 
 In Socialistic faith that there could be 
 A common basis of equality. 
 But now we know and by the motor swear 
 The prepossession was as false as fair : 
 Men are not equal ; no two intellects 
 Are of a calibre ; desires, defects. 
 Powers, aptitudes, are never on a par. 
 No more than finger-prints and noses are. 
 And on my soul and conscience I maintain 
 Political equality's as vain 
 As personal : for instance, I would place 
 
 io8 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMOBI LISM 
 The franchise on a principle of race, 
 And give the Saxon's forward reach a felt 
 Prepotence o'er the backward-glancing Celt ; 
 And if his chauffeur counts as one, why then 
 Sir Simon Sinaplex should be reckoned ten. 
 I call Democracy archaic, just 
 As manhood suffrage is atavic lust 
 For folkmotes of the prime, whose analogue 
 In travel was the train, a passing vogue : 
 The automobile put an end to that, 
 And left Democracy as fallen and flat 
 As railway-stock. Wealth and the crafty hand 
 That gathers wealth had always at command 
 Horse-carriages for private travel, but 
 The pace had got beyond that leisured rut ; 
 Class, mass and mob for fifty years and more 
 Had all to travel in the jangling roar 
 Of railways, the nomadic caravan 
 That stifled individual mind in man, 
 Till automobilism arose at last ! 
 Now with the splendid periods of the past 
 Our youthful century is proudly linked ; 
 And things that Socialism supposed extinct. 
 Degree, nobility and noble strife, 
 
 109 
 
CONCERNING AUTOMOBILISM 
 A form, a style, a privacy in life 
 Will reappear; and, crowning nature's plan. 
 The individual and the gentleman 
 In England reassume his lawful place 
 And vindicate the greatness of the race. 
 
THE CAKE OF MITHRIDATES 
 
 QUENCHED is the fire on autumn's hearth 
 The ingle vacant, hushed the song ; 
 But the resolved, consistent earth, 
 And nature, tolerant and strong, 
 
 Serenely wait the ordered change 
 Of times and tides. Ten thousand years 
 
 Of day and night, the scope and range 
 Of liberal seasons ; smiles and tears 
 
 Of June and April ; brumal storm, 
 Autumnal calm, and flower and fruit : 
 
 These are the rich content, the form 
 Of nature's mind ; these constitute 
 
 . The academe and discipline. 
 
 The joust and knightly exercise, 
 The culture of the earth wherein 
 The earth's profound composure lies. 
 Ill 
 
THE CAKE OF MITHRIDATES 
 The wisdom of the earth excels 
 
 The craft and skill of every age. 
 Witness the tale the Persian tells 
 
 Of Mithridates, king and mage : — 
 
 The whole divan extolled his powers : 
 They said the soil revered him so, 
 
 That, if he planted sawdust, flowers 
 Of every hue would promptly grow. 
 
 " So be it ! " quoth the King of kings : 
 " Bring hither sweepings of the street, 
 
 Chaff, sawdust, money, jewels, rings. 
 And fifty grains of summer wheat ". 
 
 He sowed them in a fertile bed, 
 And set a guard about the plot 
 
 Both day and night : " Although ", he said, 
 "The earth is honest, men are not". 
 
 The wheat betimes began to grow. 
 
 In shame as in a mordant steeped, 
 The viziers, sulking in a row, 
 
 Beheld at length the harvest reaped. 
 
THE CAKE OF M ITH RIDATES 
 
 Said then the King, " A sheaf! Proceed : 
 Thresh, winnow, grind it, bolt and bake. 
 
 And bring with all convenient speed 
 Of leavened bread a goodly cake. 
 
 " For you, my worthy viziers — come ! 
 
 The marvellous crops you promised me?" 
 The whole perturbed divan, as dumb 
 
 As oysters, felt indeed at sea. 
 
 " Ha!" cried the King, ** when shall we laugh 
 At prodigies great nature grants 
 
 Almighty monarchs ? Fruit of chaff. 
 Where is it ? Where, my sawdust-plants ? 
 
 " The vine and vintage of my gold ? 
 
 My silver-bushes, where are they ? 
 My coin should yield a hundred-fold 
 
 By nature's lavish usury ! 
 
 * ' My fragrant banks of posied rings 
 Where diamonds blossom, show me ; show 
 
 In arbours where the bulbul sings 
 A branch of budding rubies glow. 
 
 H 113 
 
THE CAKE OF M ITH RI DATES 
 " My jewel-orchards, money-shrubs ? 
 
 Perhaps they're sprouting underground ? 
 My cash, at least, among the grubs — 
 
 My cash and gems ! Let them be found t 
 
 " Dig, viziers, dig ! " The viziers dug : 
 Among the deep roots of the grain. 
 
 With here an earthworm, there a slug 
 They found the treasure, sowed in vain. 
 
 And all the sweepings of the streets, 
 The chaff, the rubbish ? Like a jest 
 
 Forgiven, forgotten ! So discreet 
 Is nature's kindly alkahest. 
 
 Then every vizier lost his nerve. 
 Expecting death, a prompt despatch. 
 
 But Mithridates said, *' Observe 
 How great the soil is : bulbuls hatch 
 
 " The cuckoo's eggs, whereas the earth 
 Ignores the costliest stone to feed 
 
 With chosen fare and bring to birth 
 The soul of any honest seed. 
 114 
 
THE CAKE OF MITHRIDATES 
 "The earth is true and harbours not 
 
 Imposture : all your flattering lies 
 Are buried in this garden-plot ; 
 
 Be genuine if you would be wise ". 
 
 With that the baker, breathing spice, 
 Produced the cake hot from the fire. 
 
 And every vizier ate a slice 
 Resolving to be less a liar. 
 
 I IS 
 
THE LUTANIST 
 
 THE harvests of purple and gold 
 Are garnered and trodden ; dead leaves 
 To-morrow will carpet the wold ; 
 
 And the arbours and sylvan eaves 
 Dismantled, no welcome extend ; 
 
 The bowers and the sheltering eaves 
 Will witness to-morrow the end 
 
 Of their stained, of their sumptuous leaves, 
 While tempests apparel the wold 
 In their cast-off crimson and gold. 
 
 But I of abundance to be 
 
 Think only, the corn and the wine, 
 The manifold wealth of the sea 
 
 And the harvest-home of the mine. 
 Decay and the fall of leaf. 
 
 Lost lives in the tenebrous mine, 
 
 ii6 
 
THE LUTANIST 
 Disaster, disconsolate grief 
 
 Molest not the corn and the wine, 
 The infinite wealth of the sea 
 And the bountiful harvests to be. 
 
 For beneath are the heavens and above, 
 
 And time is a silken yoke ; 
 My lute is my friend ; and I love 
 
 A beautiful maid of my folk — 
 A marvel to see and adore, 
 
 Astounding her foes and her folk 
 With silence and exquisite lore 
 
 Of youth and its delicate yoke, 
 With wonderful wisdom in love. 
 And the music beneath and above. 
 
 I think how her beauty would kill 
 A lover less ardent than I, 
 
 I faint and my heart stands still 
 In the street when she passes by ; 
 
 My lute, I bid it be dumb : — 
 " Hush, for my love goes by ! 
 117 
 
THE LUTANIST 
 O hush, or she may not come ! 
 
 A lover less ardent than I 
 Her beauty might palsy, might kill ! 
 Lute-strings, heart-strings, be still ! 
 
 But when she has passed a spell 
 
 Delivers my voice and my lute ; 
 My songs and my melodies well 
 
 Like fountains ; like clusters of fruit 
 My fantasy ripens ; my rhymes, 
 
 With savour of wayside fruit 
 And sweet as aerial chimes 
 
 Of flower-bells, ring to my lute ; 
 Like fountains my melodies well 
 
 When the thought of her works like a spell 
 
 She walks and the emerald lawn 
 
 Is jewelled at every tread ; 
 Like the burning tresses of dawn 
 
 The virgin gold of her head 
 Illumines the land and the sea ; 
 
 From her glittering feet to her head 
 
 ii8 
 
THE LUTANIST 
 Is the essence of being — is she 
 
 Who walks with a magical tread 
 As she dazzles the eyes of dawn 
 And jewels the grass-green lawn. 
 
 Though the harvests of purple and gold 
 
 Are garnered, and fallen leaves 
 To-morrow will carpet the wold, 
 
 I think how the sylvan eaves 
 A welcome in summer extend, 
 
 How the bowers and the sheltering eaves 
 Will mantle in summer and bend 
 
 With their bloom and their burden of leaves 
 And autumn apparel the wold 
 In harvests of purple and gold. 
 
 119 
 
ST. MICHAEL'S MOUNT 
 
 r. MICHAEL'S MOUNT, the tidal isle, 
 
 In May with daffodils and lilies 
 Is kirtled gorgeously a while 
 
 As ne'er another English hill is : 
 About the precipices cling 
 The rich renascence robes of Spring. 
 
 Her gold and silver, nature's gifts. 
 
 The prodigal with both hands showers : 
 O not in patches, not in drifts 
 
 But round and round, a mount of flowers- 
 Of lilies and of daffodils, 
 The envy of all other hills. 
 
 And on the lofty summit looms 
 
 The castle : none could build or plan it. 
 The foursquare foliage springs and blooms. 
 The piled elaborate flower of granite. 
 That not the sun can wither ; no. 
 Nor any tempest overthrow. 
 
TWO DOGS 
 
 TWO dogs on Bournemouth beach : a mon- 
 grel, one, 
 With spaniel plainest on the palimpsest, 
 The blur of muddled stock ; the other, bred. 
 With tapering muzzle, rising brow, strong jaw — 
 A terrier to the tail's expressive tip, 
 Magnetic, nimble, endlessly alert. 
 
 The mongrel, wet and shivering, at my feet 
 
 Deposited a wedge of half-inch board, 
 
 A foot in length and splintered at the butt ; 
 
 Withdrew a yard and crouched in act to spring. 
 
 While to and fro between his wedge and me 
 
 The glancing shuttle of his eager look 
 
 A purpose wove. The terrier, ears a-cock. 
 
 And neck one curve of sheer intelligence. 
 
 Stood sentinel : no sound, no movement, save 
 
 The mongrel's telegraphic eyes, bespoke 
 
 The object of the canine pantomime. 
 
TWO DOGS 
 
 I stooped to grasp the wedge, knowing the game ; 
 But like a thing uncoiled the mongrel snapped 
 It off, and promptly set it out again. 
 The terrier at his quarters, every nerve 
 Waltzing inside his lithe rigidity. 
 
 " More complex than I thought ! " Again I made 
 To seize the wedge ; again the mongrel won, 
 Whipped off the jack, relaid it, crouched and 
 
 watched. 
 The terrier at attention all the time. 
 I won the third bout : ere the mongrel snapped 
 His toy, I stayed my hand : he halted, half 
 Across the neutral ground, and in the pause 
 Of doubt I seized the prize. A vanquished yelp 
 From both ; and then intensest vigilance. 
 
 Together, when I tossed the wedge, they plunged 
 Before it reached the sea. The mongrel, out 
 Among the waves, and standing to them, meant 
 Heroic business ; but the terrier dodged 
 Behind, adroitly scouting in the surf. 
 And seized the wedge, rebutted by the tide, 
 In shallow water, while the mongrel searched 
 
 122 
 
TWO DOGS 
 
 The English Channel on his hind-legs poised. 
 The terrier laid the trophy at my feet : 
 And neither dog protested when I took 
 The wedge : the overture of their marine 
 Diversion had been played out once for all. 
 
 A second match the reckless mongrel won, 
 Vanishing twice under the heavy surf, 
 Before he found and brought the prize to land. 
 Then for an hour the aquatic sport went on, 
 And still the mongrel took the heroic role, 
 The terrier hanging deftly in the rear. 
 Sometimes the terrier when the mongrel found 
 Betrayed a jealous scorn, as who should say, 
 " Your hero's always a vulgarian ! Pah ! " 
 But when the mongrel missed, after a fight 
 With such a sea of troubles, and saw the prize 
 Grabbed by the terrier in an inch of surf, 
 He seemed entirely satisfied, and watched 
 With more pathetic vigilance the cast 
 That followed. 
 
 " Once a passion, mongrel, this 
 Retrieving of a stick ", I told the brute, 
 
 123 
 
TWO DOGS 
 
 " Has now become a vice with you. Go home ! 
 Wet to the marrow and palsied with the cold, 
 You won't give in, and, good or bad, you've 
 
 earned 
 My admiration. Go home now and get warm. 
 And the best bone in the pantry ". As I talked 
 I stripped the water from his hybrid coat, 
 Laughed and made much of him — which mortified 
 The funking terrier. 
 
 " I'm despised, it seems ! " 
 The terrier thought. * ' My cleverness (my feet 
 Are barely wet !) beside the mongrel's zeal 
 Appears timidity. This biped's mad 
 To pet the stupid brute. Yap ! Yah ! " He 
 
 seized 
 The wedge and went ; and at his heels at once. 
 Without a thought of me, the mongrel trudged. 
 
 Along the beach, smokers of cigarettes, 
 All sixpenny-novel-readers to a man. 
 Attracted Master Terrier. Again the wedge, 
 Passed to the loyal mongrel, was teed with care ; 
 Again the fateful overture began. 
 
 124 
 
TWO DOGS 
 
 Upon the fourth attempt, and not before, 
 And by a feint at that, the challenged youth 
 (Most equable, be sure, of all the group : 
 Allow the veriest dog to measure men !) 
 Secured the soaked and splintered scrap of deal 
 Thereafter, as with me, the game progressed, 
 The breathless, shivering mongrel, rushing out 
 Into the- heavy surf, there to be tossed 
 And tumbled like a floating bunch of kelp. 
 While gingerly the terrier picked his steps 
 Strategic in the rear, and snapped the prize 
 Oftener than his more adventurous, more 
 Romantic, more devoted rival did. 
 The uncomfortable moral glares at one ! 
 And, further, in the mongrel's wistful mind 
 A primitive idea darkly wrought : 
 Having once lost the prize in the overture 
 With his bipedal rival, he felt himself 
 In honour and in conscience bound to plunge 
 For ever after it at the winner's will. 
 But the smart terrier was an Overdog, 
 And knew a trick worth two of that. He thought 
 If canine cerebration works like ours, 
 And I interpret canine mind aright — 
 
 125 
 
TWO DOGS 
 " Let men and mongrels worry and wet their coats ! 1 1 1 
 I use my brains and choose the better part. 
 Quick-witted ease and self-approval lift 
 Me miles above this anxious cur, absorbed, 
 Body and soul, in playing a game I win 
 Without an effort. And yet the mongrel seems 
 The happier dog. How's that? Belike, the old 
 Compensatory principle again. 
 I have pre-eminence and conscious worth ; 
 And he has power to fling himself away 
 For anything or nothing. Men and dogs, 
 What an unfathomable world it is ! " 
 
 126 
 
THE WASP 
 
 ONCE as I went by rail to Epping Street, 
 Both windows being open, a wasp flew in ; 
 Through the compartment swung and almost out 
 Scarce seen, scarce heard ; but dead against the 
 
 pane 
 Entitled " Smoking," did the train's career 
 Arrest her passage. Such a wonderful 
 Impervious transparency, before 
 That palpitating moment, had never yet 
 Her airy voyage thwarted. Undismayed, 
 With diligence incomparable, she sought 
 An exit, till the letters like a snare 
 Entangled her ; or else the frosted glass 
 And signature indelible appeared 
 The key to all the mystery : there she groped. 
 And flirted petulant wings, and fiercely sang 
 A counter-spell against the sorcery, 
 
 127 
 
THE WASP 
 The sheer enchantment that inhibited 
 Her access to the world — her birthright there ! 
 So visible, and so beyond her reach ! 
 Baffled and raging like a tragic queen, 
 She left at last the stencilled tablet ; roamed 
 The pane a while to cool her regal ire, 
 Then tentatively touched the window-frame : 
 Sure footing still, though rougher than the glass ; 
 Dissimilar in texture, and so obscure ! 
 
 Perplexed now by opacity with foot and wing 
 She coasted up and down the wood and worked 
 Her wrath to passion-point again. Then from the 
 
 frame 
 She slipped by chance into the open space 
 Left by the lowered sash : — the world once more 
 In sight ! She paused ; she closed her wings, and 
 
 felt 
 The air with learned antennae for the smooth 
 Resistance that she knew now must belong 
 To such mysterious transparences. 
 No foothold ? Down she fell — six inches down ! — 
 Hovered a second, dazed and dubious still ; 
 Then soared away a captive queen set free. 
 
 128 
 
THE THAMES EMBANKMENT 
 
 AS gray and dank as dust and ashes slaked 
 - With wash of urban tides the morning 
 lowered ; 
 But over Chelsea Bridge the sagging sky 
 Had colour in it — blots of faintest bronze, 
 The stains of daybreak. Westward slabs of light 
 From vapour disentangled, sparsely glazed 
 The panelled firmament ; but vapour held 
 The morning captive in the smoky east. 
 At lowest ebb the tide on either bank 
 Laid bare the fat mud of the Thames, all pinched 
 And scalloped thick with dwarfish surges. Cranes, 
 Derricks and chimney-stalks of the Surrey-side, 
 Inverted shadows, in the motionless. 
 Dull, leaden mirror of the channel hung : 
 Black flags of smoke broke out, and in the dead 
 Sheen of the water hovered underneath, 
 I 129 
 
THE THAMES EMBANKMENT 
 As in the upper region, listlessly, 
 Across the viaduct trailing plumes of steam, 
 The trains clanked in and out. 
 
 Slowly the sun 
 Undid the homespun swathing of the clouds, 
 And splashed his image on the northern shore — 
 A thing extravagantly beautiful : 
 The glistening, close-grained canvas of the mud 
 Like hammered copper shone, and all about 
 The burning centre of the mirror'd orbs 
 Illimitable depth of silver fire 
 Harmonious beams the overtones of light. 
 Suffused the emboss'd, metallic river bank. 
 Woven of rainbows a dewdrop can dissolve 
 And packed with power a simple lens can wield, 
 The perfect, only source of beauty, light 
 Reforms uncouthest shapelessness and turns 
 Decoloured refuse into ornament ; 
 The leafless trees that lined the vacant street 
 Had all their stems picked out in golden scales, 
 Their branches carved in ebony ; and shed 
 Around them by the sanction of the morn 
 In lieu of leaves each wore an aureole. 
 
 130 
 
THE THAMES EMBANKMENT 
 Barges at anchor, barges stranded, hulks 
 Ungainly, in the unshorn beams and rich 
 Replenished planet of a winter sun, 
 Appeared ethereal, and about to glide 
 On high adventure chartered, swift away 
 For regions undiscovered. 
 
 Huddled wharfs 
 A while, and then once more a reach of Thames 
 Visibly flowing where the sun and wind 
 Together caught the current. Quays and piers 
 To Vauxhall Bridge, and there the Baltic Wharf 
 Exhibited its wonders : figureheads 
 Of the old wooden walls on gate and post — 
 Colossal torsos, bulky bosoms thrown 
 Against the storm, sublime uplifted eyes 
 Telling the stars. As white as ghosts 
 They overhung the way, usurping time 
 With carved memorials of the past. Forlorn 
 Elysium of the might of England ! 
 
 Gulls, 
 Riparian scavengers, arose and wheeled 
 About my head, for morsels begging loud 
 
 131 
 
THE THAMES EMBANKMENT 
 With savage cries that piercingly reverbed 
 The tempest's dissonance. Birds in themselves 
 Unmusical and uninventive ape 
 Impressive things with mocking undesigned : 
 The eagle's bark mimics the crashing noise 
 That shakes his eyry when the thunder roars ; 
 And chanticleer's imperious trumpet-call 
 Re-echoes round the world his ancestor's 
 Barbaric high-wrought challenge to the dawn ; 
 But birds of homely feather and tuneful throat, 
 With music in themselves and masterdom, 
 To beauty turn obsessive sight and sound : 
 The mounting larks, compact of joyful fire, 
 Render the coloured sunlight into song ; 
 Adventurous and impassioned nightingales 
 Transmute the stormy equinox they breast 
 With courage high, for hawthorn thickets bound 
 When spring arrives, into the melody 
 That floods the forest aisles ; the robin draws 
 Miraculously from the rippling brook 
 The red wine of his lay ; blackbird and thrush. 
 Prime-artists of the woodland, proudly take 
 All things sonorous for their province, weave 
 The gold-veined thunder and the crystal showers 
 
 132 
 
THE THAMES EMBANKMENT 
 The winds, the rivers and the choir of birds 
 In the rich strains of their chromatic score. 
 
 By magic mechanism the weltering clouds 
 Re-grouped themselves in continents and isles 
 That diapered the azure firmament ; 
 And sombre chains of cumulus, outlined 
 In ruddy shade along the house-tops loomed. 
 Phantasmal alp on alp. The sunbeams span 
 Chaotic vapour into cosmic forms. 
 And juggled in the sky, with hoods of cloud 
 As jesters twirl on sticks their booby-caps — 
 The potent sunbeams, that had fished the whole 
 Enormous mass of moisture from the sea, 
 Kneaded, divided and divided, wrought 
 And turned it to a thousand fantasies 
 Upon the ancient potter's wheel, the earth. 
 
 133 
 
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE ROAD 
 
 MORE than one way of walking? Verily; 
 But, for the art of walking, only one. 
 Beginners in the ambulative art. 
 As in all art, are immethodical : 
 Your want of method, rightly understood. 
 Is faculty, and not its absence ; style 
 Adventurous of genius ; say, a gift ; 
 Immethod, necessary handicap 
 Upon originality, that loses 
 Matches many on time or weight, but beats 
 The winner virtually. The crammer's wiles. 
 And royal roads to knowledge, short-cuts, keys. 
 And time-and-labour-saving mechanism 
 Beset the ambulative acolyte ; 
 But true originality in art 
 Would not at first, even if it could, possess 
 Impeccable technique ; and your foredoomed 
 Pedestrian errs designedly (if one 
 
 134 
 
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE ROAD 
 Whose privilege it is to deviate 
 Can ever be arraigned for trespass) bent 
 On quitting, jeopardy or none, the old 
 Immediately seductive methods blazed 
 By trained precursors in pedestrial art. 
 
 At first then the prospective walker, rash 
 As any hero, dedicates himself 
 To chance. A vagabond upon the earth 
 He leads a life uncertain : art and craft 
 Pedalian suffer secret chrysalid 
 Probations and adventures ere they gain 
 The ultimate imago of complete 
 Pedestrianism. Through gross suburban miles 
 And over leagues of undistinguished ground 
 He plods, he tramps. Utilitarian thoughts 
 Of exercise and health extenuate 
 The dullness of the duty ; he persuades 
 Himself he likes it ; finds, where none exist. 
 Amazing qualities ; and tires his limbs, 
 His thought, his fancy, o'er and o'er again. 
 But in the dismal watches of the night 
 He knows it all delusion ; beauty, none. 
 Nor pleasure in it ; ennui only — eased 
 
 135 
 
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE ROAD 
 By speculation on the wayside-inn, 
 Or country-town hotel where lunch permits 
 An hour's oblivion of his self-imposed, 
 His thriftless drudgery. Despair ! — And life ? 
 Worth picking from the gutter ? No ; not worth 
 The stooping for ! Natheless, a walker born. 
 He takes the road next day ; steps out once 
 
 more, 
 As if the world were just begun, and he. 
 Sole monarch ; plods the suburb, tramps the 
 
 waste — 
 Again returning baffled and dismayed. 
 
 He tries a comrade. Worse and worse ! — for that. 
 
 In high pedestrianism, turns out to be 
 
 A double misery, a manacled 
 
 Contingence with vexation. Walking-tours ? 
 
 Belletrists crack them up. He takes one : — lo, 
 
 A sheer atrocity ! A man may like 
 
 To drink, but who would quench next morning's 
 
 drouth. 
 Unholy though it be, with torture forte 
 Et dure in gallon draughts when by his bed 
 A hair gleams of the dog that bit him ! Tours 
 
 136 
 
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE ROAD 
 Pedestrious ? Madness, like the poet's who 
 
 thought 
 To write a thousand sonnets at the rate 
 Of three a day ! And this the tale of years ! 
 
 Forth from his travail and despair at last, 
 Crash through his plodding apparatus, breaks 
 The dawn of art. He recollects a mile. 
 Or half a mile that pleased him ; a furlong here. 
 And there a hundred yards ; or an hour's march 
 Over some curve of the world when everything 
 Above him and about him from the zenith 
 To the sky-edge, and radiant from his feet 
 Toward every cardinal point, put off the veil, 
 Becoming evident as guilt or love, as things 
 They cannot hide : — becoming him. 
 And he becoming them ; and all his past 
 And all his future wholly what they are, 
 The very form and meaning of the earth 
 Itself. And at these times he recollects. 
 And in these places, how his thoughts were clear 
 As crystal, deeper than the sea, as swift 
 As light — the pulse, the bosom and the zone 
 Of beauty infinite. And then and there 
 
 137 
 
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE ROAD 
 Whatever he imagined took at once 
 A bodily shape ; and nought conceived or done 
 Since life began appeared irrational, 
 Wanton or needless. Since, the world and fate 
 Material functions of each other, apt 
 As syllables of power and magic mind 
 In some self-reading riddle, as fracted bits 
 In self-adjusting instruments that play 
 Unheard ethereal music of the spheres. 
 Assumed their places equably; all things 
 Fell duly into line and dressed their ranks. 
 
 Thus art begins, as sudden as a star 
 In some unconstellated tract of space. 
 Where two extinct long-wandering orbs collide 
 And smite into each other and become 
 A lamp of glory, no crepuscular 
 Uncertainty, no interval between 
 The old misfortune and the new delight. 
 And thus at once the plodder of the waste 
 Attains utility and finds himself 
 Aristocrat and patron of the road ; 
 The artisan, an artist — aristocrat 
 And artist being over synonymes. 
 
 138 
 
THE ARISTOCRAT OF THE ROAD 
 All vagabondage, all bohemianism, 
 All errantry, the unlicked, chrysalid 
 Condition of aristocracy and art. 
 Cut off for ever, the proud pedestrian free 
 Of the world, walks only now in picked resorts. 
 And can without a chart, without a guide, 
 Discover lands richer than El Dorado, 
 Sweeter than Beulah, and with ease 
 Ascend secluded mountains more delectable 
 Than heights in ancient pilgrimages famed, 
 Or myth-clad hills, or summits of romance. 
 Old traversed roads he traverses again, 
 Untroubled ; nothing new he sees 
 Except the stretch of pleasure-ground, like one 
 Who turns the leaves o'er of a tedious book. 
 Careless of verbiage, to reperuse 
 The single page inspired ; in regions new 
 He goes directly to his own like beasts 
 That never miss the way ; and having marked 
 A province with the beauties of his choice, 
 In them alone he walks, lord of the world. 
 
 139 
 
RAIL AND ROAD 
 
 MARCH Many-weathers, bluff and affable, 
 The usher and the pursuivant of Spring, 
 Had sent his North wind blaring through the 
 
 world — 
 A mundane wind that held the earth, and puffed 
 The smoke of urban fire and furnace far 
 Afield. An ashen canopy of cloud. 
 The dense immobled sky, high-pitched above 
 The wind's terrestrial office, overhung 
 The city when the morning train drew out. 
 Leaping along the land from town to town. 
 Its iron lungs respired its breath of steam. 
 Its resonant flanges, and its vertebral 
 Loose-jointed carcase of a centipede 
 Gigantic, hugged and ground the parallel 
 Adjusted metals of its destined way 
 With apathetic fatalism, the mark 
 Of all machinery. — From Paddington 
 To Basingstoke the world seemed standing still : 
 
 140 
 
RAIL AND ROAD 
 Nothing astir between the firmaments 
 Except the aimless tumult of the wind, 
 And clanging travail of the ponderous train 
 In labour with its journey on the smooth, 
 The includible, the shining rails. 
 
 But prompt at Basingstoke an interlude 
 Began : a reckless youth, possessed with seven 
 Innocuous devils of self-consciousness 
 Primeval, bouncing in irruptively, 
 Lusty-Juventus-wise, annexed the whole 
 Compartment — as a pendant to the earth. 
 Already his ! Wind-shaven, ruddy : hunched 
 And big : all knees and knuckles : with a mouth 
 That opened like a portal : fleshy chops 
 And turned-up nose widespread, the signature 
 Of jollity : a shapeless, elvish skull ; 
 His little pig's eyes in their sockets soused 
 But simmering merrily : just twenty years ; 
 One radiation of nervous energy : 
 A limber tongue and most unquenchable. 
 Complacent blaze of indiscretion, soft 
 As a night-light in a nursery. "Where away ? " 
 Quoth he: and "Hang the weather! I've seen 
 worse, 
 
 141 
 
RAIL AND ROAD 
 In my time, for the season". Then: Did we think 
 The train was doing thirty or forty miles 
 An hour? Sometimes, by instinct, he could 
 
 tell 
 To a mile the rate at which a train went. 
 This morning, for a wonder, he couldn't trust 
 His judgment in the matter ; — annoying ! — Still 
 A man's form varied, and we must excuse 
 His inability to gauge our speed. 
 Good golf about here, — very ! Did we play ? 
 And, by the by, talking of golf, he did 
 A brilliant thing just now : — missing the train 
 At Farnham on the other line, instead 
 Of waiting for the next, he tramped across 
 To Basingstoke, — some decent tale of miles ; 
 His destination being Winchester, 
 Either line suited, — see ? The weather, — yes. 
 The weather : — healthy, of course ; — your moist 
 
 cold kills ; 
 Your dry cold cures : — to-day it seemed as cold, — 
 But that must be the wind ; in sheltered roads 
 It smelt like Spring : — to-morrow, — who could 
 tell 
 
 To-morrow's weather?— a funny climate, ours ! 
 
 142 
 
RAIL AND ROAD 
 Was that a cow there, or a — yes, a cow. 
 He didn't know how we regarded it, 
 But he, for his part, took it that the hand 
 That rocked the cradle ruled the world : 
 
 drop 
 A signature into a ballot-box 
 Would make no earthly ! (Slang, ellipitical.) 
 Although we must remember, all of us, 
 This rocking of the cradle was out of date ; 
 But that he wouldn't canvass : — we were 
 
 mind 
 There must be no mistake : women were women 
 All the world to nothing : and — mark him — if 
 They had political enfranchisement, 
 No one could say — no one at all ! — what might 
 And mightn't happen : not a doubt of that. 
 Getting along more quickly : forty miles, 
 He thought: or less, perhaps. He meant 
 
 lunch 
 At Winchester : then hire a trap and drive . . . 
 " Instanter to the devil," someone sighed. 
 
 All this, and further, an infinitude 
 Of dislocated prattle, with a smile 
 Indelible, and such a negligent 
 
 143 
 
RAIL AND ROAD 
 Absorbition i in self that no appeal, 
 Except a sheer affront, abuse, or blow, 
 Could have revealed remotely any gleam 
 Or shade, to him apparent, of his own 
 Insipid and grotesque enormity ! 
 When time, distemper or disaster sap 
 Such individuals, and they see themselves. 
 In facets of disrupted character. 
 As others see them, stupid and absurd. 
 How bad the quarter of an hour must be ! 
 Natheless there are extant a hearty breed. 
 Incorrigibly cheerful, who behold 
 Themselves for ever in the best of lights. 
 And by the pipe and bowl of Old King Cole 
 They have the best of it ! To see ourselves 
 As others see us may be good enough ; 
 But to love others in their vanities. 
 And to portray the glorious counterfeit — 
 In sympathetic ink that sympathy 
 
 ^ This word has fallen out of use ; but having: it we might 
 employ it. Its doublet, "absorption,'' could be relegated to 
 physics, etc., and "absorbition" kept for mental engrossment. 
 The dictionaries lay the stress on the penultimate ; but in restoring 
 "absorbition" to the language, I place the main accent on the 
 second syllable. — J. D. 
 
 144 
 
RAIL AND ROAD 
 Alone can read aright, — why that's a gift 
 Vouchsafed to genius of the rarest strain ! 
 
 At Lyndhurst-road the coach for Lyndhurst took 
 The turnpike at its best commercial pace. 
 And there the sun burst out with moted beams 
 In handfuls, clenched like sheaves of thunderbolts. 
 The riven clouds, of homespun slashed and gored, 
 Displayed through unhemmed slits the turquoise 
 
 sky,— 
 As tender as a damsel's bosom-thoughts. 
 Across the forest's swarthy-purple ridge 
 A sparse shower twinkled : but the broken bulk 
 Of vapour, by the sunbeams bundled up. 
 Slipped o'er the sky-edge and was no more seen. 
 Like a lithe weapon by gigantic hands 
 In pastance wielded, keen the brandished wind 
 Whistled about us all the uphill way 
 To Lyndhurst, where lofty church o'erlooks 
 The forest's metes and bounds, its modish spire 
 A landmark far and wide. But in the glebes 
 And garden-closes ancient houses — thatched, 
 Of post-and-panel, and with arching eaves 
 About their high and deep-set windows — peer 
 Occultly out of many centuries. 
 
 K I4S 
 
RAIL AND ROAD 
 An old-world use and wont, the neighbourhood 
 And venue of the place are everywhere 
 Presumptive, — in the High Street, new and raw 
 As in the sylvan faubourgs ; for a gust 
 Of burning log and faggot importunes 
 The passer-by — ^the forest's bitter-sweet 
 Aroma, as it turns to genial warmth 
 And toothsome savour for the villager. 
 
 146 
 
SONG FOR THE TWENTY-FOURTH 
 OF MAY 
 
 THE character and strength of us 
 Who conquer everywhere, 
 We sing the English of it thus, 
 And bid the world beware : 
 We bid the world beware 
 The perfect heart and will, 
 
 That dare the utmost men may dare 
 And follow freedom still. 
 
 Sea-room, land-room, ours, my masters, 
 
 ours, 
 Hand in hand with destiny, and first among 
 
 the Powers ! 
 Our boasted Ocean Empire, sirs, we boast 
 
 of it again, 
 Our Monarch, and our Rulers, and our 
 Women, and our Men ! 
 147 
 
SONG FOR TWENTY-FOURTH OF MAY 
 
 II 
 The pillars of our Empire stand 
 
 In unforgotten graves ; 
 We built dominion on the land, 
 And greatness on the waves : 
 Our Empire on the waves, 
 Established firm and sure, 
 
 And founded deep in ocean's caves 
 While honour shall endure. 
 
 Sea-room, land-room, honourably ours. 
 Hand in hand with destiny and first among 
 
 the Powers ! 
 Our boasted Ocean Empire, sirs, we boast 
 
 of it again. 
 Our ancient Isles, our Lands afar, and all 
 our loyal Men ! 
 
 Ill 
 Our flag, on every wind unfurled, 
 
 Proclaims from sea to sea 
 A future and a nobler world 
 Where men and thoughts are free : 
 Our men, our thoughts are free : 
 148 
 
SONG FOR TWENTY-FOURTH OF MAY 
 Our wars are waged for peace : 
 We stand, in arms for liberty 
 Till bonds and bondage cease. 
 
 Sea-room, land-room, ours, appointed ours. 
 Conscious of our calling and the first among 
 
 the Powers ! 
 Our boasted Ocean Sovereignty, again and 
 
 yet again ! 
 Our Counsel, and our Conduct, and our 
 Armaments and Men ! 
 
 WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON. LTD. 
 PRIKTBKS, PLYMOUTH